Daniel Garness speculates that his friend, neighbor and client Patrick Startt’s 724-square-foot home in the Irish Channel was built around the 1850s-’60s as a raised one-room affair, probably a kitchen, given the freestanding fireplace located roughly in the middle.
“The structure probably served as a dependency to another home,” said Garness, a designer of both homes and landscapes for 50 years.
As was customary at the time, the structure was constructed of 2-by-12-inch bargeboards. After making their way down the Mississippi River from parts up North, flatboats were salvaged and reused as building materials…