Curtis Residence
New Orleans, Orleans Parish, Louisiana
Marker Inscription
The Nathaniel C. Jr. & Frances Curtis residence has been placed on the National Register of Historic Places. Constructed in 1963, this modern residence was designed by architect Nathaniel C. "Buster" Curtis for himself, his wife Frances and their seven children. It remained in the family for fifty years. The Curtis residence was designated a city landmark by the New Orleans Historic District Landmarks Commission in 2010. It is the first modern house in the city of New Orleans, as well as the first building by the firm Curtis & Davis, to be listed in the National Register of Historic Places. 2014 United States Department of the Interior
Erected by United States Department of the Interior
The Story
Architect Nathaniel C. 'Buster' Curtis designed this house in 1963 for his own large family, and it stayed with the Curtises for half a century. Boldly modern in a city famed for its older styles, it was the first modernist house in New Orleans and the first work by the noted firm Curtis & Davis to reach the National Register. The city named it a landmark in 2010, and the National Register listing followed in 2014.
Why it matters
It documents the arrival of postwar modern architecture in a historic city and the recognition that recent design, too, can be worth preserving.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
By the early 1960s, New Orleans was a city defined by its past. Its most famous streets were lined with Creole cottages, shotgun houses, iron-lace galleries, and grand nineteenth-century mansions — an architecture of porches, shutters, and deep shade suited to a hot, wet climate. To build a house here was almost always to build in conversation with that inheritance.
But the postwar decades brought a different current sweeping across America. Returning prosperity, new materials, and a new confidence pushed architects toward clean lines, open plans, flat or low rooflines, and walls of glass that dissolved the boundary between inside and out. Modernism, born in Europe and matured in mid-century America, promised a fresh start rather than a nod to tradition.
In a city that wore its history on every façade, that promise landed differently. A modern house in New Orleans was not just a design choice; it was a small act of nerve. This 1963 residence was built at exactly that meeting point — the moment when a tradition-soaked city began to make room for the architecture of its own time.
People & events
The house was the work of Nathaniel C. Curtis, Jr. — known to friends and colleagues as ‘Buster’ — and he designed it not for a client but for himself. That detail matters. When an architect builds his own home, the result is a kind of self-portrait: the ideas he most believes in, tested on his own family rather than someone else's budget.
And it was a large family. The house was made for Curtis, his wife Frances, and their seven children — a demanding brief that a modern open plan, with its flexible spaces and generous light, was well suited to answer. The Curtises did not treat it as a showpiece to be admired and sold; they lived in it, and it stayed in the family for a full half-century.
Curtis was a principal of the firm Curtis & Davis, one of the notable architectural practices to emerge from mid-century New Orleans and go on to national work. This residence holds a particular place in that story: it was the first building by the firm to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places, making the architect's own home the family's public landmark as well as its private one.
Its place in the American story
The recognition came in layers, and the sequence tells you something. The city of New Orleans named the house a landmark through its Historic District Landmarks Commission in 2010, and the National Register listing followed in 2014 — nearly half a century after the house was built.
That gap is the point. For most of American history, ‘historic’ meant old — colonial, antebellum, at the very least prewar. The idea that a house from 1963 could deserve the same protection as a nineteenth-century mansion was, for a long time, hard to accept. Preservation had to grow up to include the recent past.
By honoring the first modern house in New Orleans to reach the National Register, this marker documents a shift in what the nation chooses to remember. It says that the bold, forward-looking design of the postwar era is now itself part of the historical record — and that innovation, not only age, can be worth preserving.
If you visit
Come to this one with your eyes recalibrated. Everything you love about historic New Orleans — the shade, the ornament, the layered old streets — is the backdrop against which this house was meant to be read. To appreciate it, notice the contrast: the confidence of clean geometry set down amid a much older vocabulary.
Look for the hallmarks of mid-century modern thinking: horizontal lines, an emphasis on light, and a design that seems to plan for real family life rather than pure display. Remember that the man who drew it also lived in it, and that seven children grew up inside — this was a working home, not a monument.
It fits naturally into a road trip built around architecture and the changing tastes of a city. Pair it, in your own mind, with the older houses nearby, and you'll have a compact lesson in how American design turned a corner in the twentieth century — and how, decades later, we decided that turn was worth commemorating too.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Nathaniel C. Curtis, Jr.
Themes & tags
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