In 1982, following his company’s restoration of the two-story office building at 618 Baronne St. in New Orleans’ Central Business District, A. Louis Read was asked about the architectural style of the small but striking structure.
The Royal Street Corp. vice chairman was at something of a loss.
“Art noveau or Art Deco,” he guessed in response to a Times-Picayune reporter’s question, adding: “It was probably very daring at the time, because there’s nothing like it around here.”
There still isn’t.
No easy description
Art nouveau or Art Deco are good guesses. “Urban Hobbit” is just as fitting, owing to the brick building’s unique dominant feature: a massive circular window stretching the full length of its 37-foot façade and reaching from the sidewalk to the second-story roofline.
Whatever it is, 618 Baronne and its barrelhead front are so singular as to be impossible to miss, an eyeball magnet amid a canyon of traditional designs.
That was no accident.
Before the current structure was built there, the site was home to a livery, with an 1896 Picayune ad advertising 200 streetcar mules for sale at that address. Subsequent ads touted “HORSES! HORSES! HORSES!”
Serving as an automobile dealership as far back as 1917, the distinctive circular façade of the two-story brick building at 618 Baronne St. was designed to catch the eye. It still does, although it is no longer a car dealership.
But with the turn of the 20th motormania came to America, and New Orleans was not immune.
And so those horses at 618 Baronne were traded for horsepower, with construction of an automobile showroom there.
‘Big new modern garage’
According to Tulane’s Southeastern Architecture Archive, the current building at the site was designed by noted local architect and architectural journalist Morgan D.H. Hite.
The exact date of construction is unclear, although an ad published in The Times-Picayune for local car dealer M. Zilberman indicates it was completed in early 1917. That ad read: “Speaking of service, Zilberman’s ranks first. That’s why I built my big new modern garage, salesroom and machine shop at 618 Baronne.”
That ad included a photo of the then-new 7,000-square-foot building. The effect was dramatic.
The massive front window provided passers-by an up-close, street-level view of those new-fangled motorcars. But Hite didn’t stop there with his innovative design. With help from an electric elevator, a car was also proudly displayed on the building’s second floor, effectively and dramatically hovering at the dead center of the circular showroom window.
An Art Deco-flavored awning over the main entrance – also circular in shape, complementing the façade – completed the effect.
Over the next few years, the Zilberman Building – as he dubbed it – was ground zero for the purchase of such classic auto brands as Oldsmobile, Mercer Motor Cars, Locomobiles, Stearns-Knight, Premiere and Marion-Handley.
The turnover begins
But by 1920, Zilberman was ready to move on, eventually opening a perfumery and antiques shop in the Bienville Hotel on St. Charles Avenue.
Taking his spot in the Zilberman building by June of that year was L.J. Patenotte, purveyor of JT Tractors. He would be the first in a rapid succession of occupants that over the next few years included a handful of car dealerships, including for Apperson, Jordan and Pierce-Arrow autos; a couple of service garages; a paint and glass shop; a tire store; and, right up until World War II, a refrigerator dealer.
After the war, the building would get its longest-serving tenant to that point in Max M. Dreyfus, who operated a Pfaff sewing machine center out of it starting around 1946 and continuing into the early 1960s.
By the time the Royal Street Corp. bought it around 1980, the building had been vacant for some time, prompting a half-million dollar restoration.
Changing with the times
As part of that work, they made it a point to preserve the unique façade, but, in acknowledgment of the challenges of downtown parking, they converted the first floor into a parking garage, with 4,000 square feet of office space upstairs.
A tiled patio was also added in the rear of the building to provide a bit of serenity for employees.
Out front, a roll-up garage door took the place of the original Art Deco awning.
Despite all that work, the Royal Street Corp. wouldn’t stay long. By 1984, the tenant merry-go-round started anew, with the building serving as campaign headquarters for longtime local U.S. Rep. Lindy Boggs, after which it was home to a technology company, a lawyer and, starting in 1997, the New Orleans Home Authority.
Somewhere along the way, the former showroom windows would get a mirror tint.
The New Orleans Home Authority, founded to provide mortgage financing for low- to moderate-income families, would change its name to the Finance Authority of New Orleans around 2000 and, later, to simply Finance New Orleans.
It still owns the building today.
Sources: The Times-Picayune archive; Tulane University Southeastern Architectural Archive
Do you know of a New Orleans building worth profiling in this column, or are you just curious about one? Contact Mike Scott at [email protected].
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