An Uptown fixer-upper becomes a showplace

Furnished in a timeless classic style, the large living room dimensions remain the same as when the house was built.

What if you can’t find a ready-to-move-in house in the neighborhood of your choice? Resourceful architectural designer Marie Palumbo found a solution. She drove around the Uptown area where the couple wanted to live. Palumbo spotted an interesting house with window air conditioning units that she felt was waiting to be rescued. The talented graduate of the Tulane School of Architecture says, “once I found just the right house, I went to the City of New Orleans Property Records office and researched the name of the owner.” And the rest, as the saying goes, is history.

Soon Palumbo and her attorney husband, Paul Simoneaux, were owners of a “fixer-upper” in just the right location. “With a one-year-old daughter, we were growing out of our Warehouse District loft and we really wanted to live Uptown,” Palumbo says. “However, the housing market was very tight with more demand than supply. After several disappointments, the solution was to find a house on our own.”

Built in 1896, the Palumbo-Simoneaux home underwent a major renovation, transforming it from the sad house on the block into a showplace. “We demolished 80 percent of the house and replaced all the electrical and plumbing, in addition to installing central air and heat,” says Palumbo.



With Palumbo’s architectural knowledge, she wasn’t hesitant to remove several load-baring walls. The outdoor porch was enclosed to create an open kitchen-den combination, with space allotted for a powder room. Upstairs a master suite was added, complete with a large walk-in shower in the bathroom.

“We never compromised the integrity of the Victoria architecture, while creating a home with all of the modern conveniences. Just because the building was more than 100 years old didn’t mean that we had to live in the house like they did back then.” Palumbo and Simoneaux acted as general contractors for the renovation, with Palumbo doing all the design work.

Today, the 3,000-square-foot residence has everything you could find in a newly constructed house, plus the fine elements of a grand, old New Orleans mansion including unique triple windows in the bay of the living and dining rooms downstairs. “I especially love the large windows in our bedroom,” Palumbo says. “We have plenty of natural light and the view of the treetops gives me the feeling of being in a tree house.”

For lagniappe, the couple modernized the guesthouse that adjoining the home on the second level via a walkway. It features a large living room downstairs and a bedroom and bathroom upstairs.

The furnishings in the home have been carefully selected to give each space a timeless modern feeling, without one bit of clutter to be found. “I have always felt that a good space without furniture remains a good space,” says Palumbo, “so it was important to me to use functional furniture that in no way distracted from the architecture of the house.”