On the Boards

Up in West Monroe, one of our homes has much of its ironwork on now.

The galleries are wrapped in ornamental cast iron straight out of the St. Charles Avenue playbook: scrolled panels, a lace frieze, the kind of detail you’d expect in the Garden District, brought North. That New Orleans gallery language doesn’t show up much in this part of the state, and against fresh white siding and a deep dentil cornice, it’s a good reminder of why we keep reaching for the classical vocabulary — it travels well, and it lasts!

Thanks to Allen Taylor of Taylor & Taylor Builders for the photo from the site.

On the Web

Fix the Floor Plan: 1,400 square feet, four moves

This month’s most-watched episode took on a 1960s ranch — about 1,400 square feet, slab on grade, eight-foot ceilings, sitting on a pie-shaped lot at the end of a cul-de-sac. The owner’s mother is moving in and needs accessibility, so flow and clearances weren’t a nicety here; they informed the whole assignment.

The headline problem was a primary bath you genuinely couldn’t use — a 24-inch door, 18 inch passage to wedge past the lavatory. The kitchen doubled as a hallway. The laundry was basically outside. And from the front door, you couldn’t see past the Living Room.

Four moves fixed it, with under 50 square feet added: a small bathroom addition (the toilet flips 180 degrees onto its existing sewer line, so no tearing up the slab), a straightened L-shaped kitchen with room for an island, a reoriented utility room that finally lives inside conditioned space, and French doors in the den that open a clean sight line from the front door straight through to the yard. That last one sounds small. It changes how the whole house feels.

And the cat is, somehow, at 13.8 million views

Remember the cat? Since last month’s newsletter, that video has gone from one million to 13.8 million views across Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. I don’t have a tidy lesson here. Sometimes you spend a career on cornices and the internet decides it’s the cat’s turn. We’re enjoying the ride.

Around Town

A week in New York with the ICAA

With Henry Bien, AIA — a former member of our studio — at the 45th Annual Arthur Ross Awards, Cipriani on 42nd Street.

I spent this past week in New York wearing my hat as President of the College of Chapters for the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art — a full slate of activities, the annual board meeting, the College of Chapters meeting, and the 45th Annual Arthur Ross Awards on May 11 at Cipriani on 42nd Street. The awards have been celebrating excellence in the classical tradition since 1982 — honoring architects, artisans, landscape designers, educators, and patrons who keep that tradition alive — and this year’s evening was co-chaired by designer Bunny Williams and architect Andrew Cogar, with ICAA President Peter Lyden on hand. I also got to catch up with Henry Bien, AIA, a former member of our studio.

One more from across the pond: a London classmate flagged that we’d turned up in the Royal Thames Yacht Club’s 2026 Review — its coverage of the club’s 250th-anniversary dinner at the Painted Hall in Greenwich, where we’d been guests of member Mark Harris (no relation) last year.

A Lifetime Achievement Award for our Liz Harris

Now for a delightful surprise — and a thoroughly earned one. From New York I flew to Atlanta to be with Liz — our operations manager, and the person who holds this firm together — and walked straight into her being honored with the SDA Lifetime Achievement Award. She had no idea it was coming. (Neither did I, which made it that much better.) In true Liz fashion, she was caught completely off guard and still delivered a speech worth recording. Anyone who has worked with this firm has felt Liz’s hand in it. She also writes — on AI, firm management, and the occasional passion project — and it’s worth your time. Congratulations, Liz.

From there we went on to Dallas to watch our daughter Victoria earn her master’s in theology from the University of Dallas — a degree she pursued through a busy, full season of family life. A proud week, on every front.

Around the Studio

Congratulations to Grace Richard, who just graduated from the LSU School of Architecture and is heading to Charlotte, North Carolina to launch her career. We’ll miss her around here — go build something good, Grace.

Coming Up

Book signing summer!

Kevin’s Are You a Rhinoceros? book-signing summer kicks off Saturday, May 30, at Barnes & Noble in Metairie (11 AM–1 PM), with stops across the region through the summer. Full schedule landing in your inbox in the next few days.

“ A good plan doesn’t add space. It finds the space you already had. — Kevin Harris