Cottages pass the aesthetics test; sales postponed
The first completed Bywater Cottages — two-family dwellings that wrap around sheltered outdoor spaces — “blend perfectly into their 19th-century surroundings,” arts writer Doug MacCash observed Jan. 31 in a New Orleans Times-Picayune article about the Andres Duany design.
The cottages were conceived as a model of small-lot development — applicable to vacant land in many towns and cities. Duany designed the initial pair of two-family cottages for a corner site in the Bywater section of New Orleans. Construction was finished in mid-2008. Each cottage contains two units, joined back to back on a lot measuring about 43 feet wide and 90 feet deep.
Duany told the Times-Picayune that the prototype units, containing about 1,400 sq. ft. of living space, cost $186,000 each, or roughly $133 per square foot, not including the cost of the land. That was more than anticipated. Duany blamed the higher costs on a series of complications, ranging from exhaustive soil testing to “gold-plated” post-Katrina building codes. He estimated that future units could be built for $170,000 each.
Each pair of double houses encloses a long T-shaped concrete driveway — part of which would be good for dance parties, according to Duany. The cottages’ two-story, dog-leg design provides more privacy than was available in shotgun houses from a century ago. Occupants do not have to walk through one room to get to another, as was true of historic shotgun houses. And whereas old “double shotgun” houses had their units side by side along a central wall, eliminating cross-ventilation, the Bywater Cottages are joined in an L-shape, allowing breezes to penetrate every room.
Attempts to sell the units for $269,000 each were unsuccessful — perhaps understandably, given the dire straits of homebuilding and residential real estate in the past year. They are being rented out for $1,300 a month until the market improves. The houses were developed by Corner Markers/Bywater LLC, a partnership of Duany, Diane Dorney, and Martha Murphy of Coastal Land & Development.
