The Refuge

After the suggestion that “we buy her mother’s house”, we expressed our doubts. “We can make it work,” she reassured.

Later, she let slip that her late mother had come to her and told her that she wanted the boys to have the house.

We scheduled a time to walk through the house for the following weekend.

The house was completed in 1966. Guy, who built the house, also constructed many of the neighboring homes. He is now 99 years old in 2021.

During construction it provided a refuge for neighbors fleeing hurricane Betsy. Being the highest structure in Arabi at the time, numerous locals sought safety within her unfinished interior. (We’ve been told, the local fire department had to buy a new truck to accommodate the height.)

The exterior of the house is clad in reclaimed brick. Guy told his family it came from a girls orphanage, or “home of refuge.” The builder’s wife, Joy, was not entirely happy being told this history when first seeing the house. She said her mother had always told her she would end up in “the bad girls home” and, now, her husband had built it around her.

Examining them closely, you can tell they are old bricks. Looking closely, one may find the finger prints of their makers. We have not been able to determine details of the bricks’ origins. New Orleans has had numerous orphanages, homes of refuge, and ‘asylums‘ for women and girls dating back to earliest years with the Casket Girls of the early 1700s.

We were pretty much sold on the house when we walked through the door for the first time. Though filled with decades of stuff, we could tell the house had good bones. The first floor was redone after hurricane Katrina. The second and third stories in contrast retain all their original 1960s details.

As if we needed another reinforcing sign, while on the third story I looked down at a box of old books. Amongst them was a copy of a book written by my great aunt. Ruth Moore (1903-1989) remains a significant figure in the canon of Maine authors. She was at the height of her popularity in the 1940s and 50s. Her second book, Spoonhandle, spent several weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and was a Book-of-the-Month club selection. It was turned into the 20th Century Fox film Deep Waters starring Dana Andrews and Jane Fontaine, featuring Caesar Romero and Ed Begly. Moore’s books are currently being reprinted by Islandport Press.

“It is doubtful if any American writer has ever done a better job of communicating a people, their talk, their thoughts, their geography, and their way of life.”

—The New York Times

We felt strongly that we wanted to commemorate the house’s history. Even before we closed, we ordered a black granite plaque for the front. When we mentioned this to gay she told us her mother ordered a plaque “The Refuge”. It had arrived in the summer of 2005. She never took it out of the box. The plaque was lost when Katrina hit in August of that year.