A Creole Cottage Tradition
From the late 1700s through the mid-1800s, Louisiana builders raised simple one-story “Creole cottages” — homes that echoed the houses of the West Indies. A cottage of that era was wood-framed, square or rectangular, and topped with a hipped or side-gable roof. The roof reached out over the porch or sidewalk, carried on slender gallery piers; later versions used iron cantilevers and braces. Inside, four rooms met corner to corner with no hallway between them, so two front doors were common. Small storage spaces sat at the rear, and one of them held the stairs to an attic that might be used for sleeping.
The Original House
Le Maison Deslatte began as one of those modest houses. Built early in the twentieth century, it was owned by Louisiana College and served as a home-education center, standing on College Drive across from the college president’s house. The plan was simple: a front porch opening into a living room, dining room, and kitchen along the right side, with a front bedroom, a bath, and a back bedroom on the left — and a porch running the length of the back.
1991 — A Home with a Purpose
In 1991, Leo and Dianne Deslatte bought the house, which had stood empty for eight years. Their hope was that their son Wesley, who is handicapped, might attend Louisiana College next door. When Wesley’s traumatic brain injury made that impossible, Leo and Dianne chose instead to renovate the old house and make it their own home.
2010 — Becoming a Maison
In 2010 they set out to remodel the house into a true “le maison” — Cajun for house. To get it right, Leo and Dianne made many trips to the Acadian Village in Lafayette, Louisiana, photographing its historic buildings and gathering ideas for an authentic Acadian home.
See the SketchUp framing walkthrough →
The House Today
Today the downstairs holds two bedrooms, each with its own bathroom, and a large utility room where the stairs climb to the second-floor living area. That living side is an open floor plan — living room, dining room, and kitchen together. Upstairs are three large bedrooms, each crowned with fourteen-foot cathedral ceilings, and a bath with a walk-in shower. A wide upstairs hallway, forty-two inches across, carries a built-in bookcase along its entire length.
The house was even turned to face what had once been its side. That new front opens onto a porch twelve and a half feet deep and forty-eight feet long, with a ten-foot ceiling of exposed rafters and a handicap ramp at one end. Stairs rise from the front porch directly to the living area — a welcome, and, should it ever be needed, a way out in case of fire.