The Beauregard-Keyes House on Chartres Street has stood in the French Quarter for two centuries, and this fall the museum is marking that milestone with a symposium bringing together architects, historians and master craftspeople to unpack how the 1826 landmark has survived two hundred years of hurricanes, ownership changes and shifting neighborhood fortunes.
The event, called Beautiful Spaces, returns to the BK House Museum & Gardens on September 19 with a program centered on preservation, legacy and stewardship of historic properties, according to Biz New Orleans. Lydia Blackmore said the symposium focuses on the beautiful space at BK House, noting that the property has been a neighborhood landmark for two hundred years because of its design, craftsmanship and stories, per the outlet's report.
Beautiful Spaces is part of BK House's yearlong bicentennial celebration, and the September gathering will examine the challenges and techniques involved in preserving a French Quarter historic landmark. Presenters will offer perspectives on the house's design, construction, division and restoration, with the day opening at 9:30 a.m. with coffee and pastries in the BK Ballroom at 1113 Chartres St., and closing with lunch and a cocktail reception at 3 p.m., the outlet reported.
A House Built From Two Traditions
The home was designed in 1826 by Baltimore-born architect François Correjolles and built by James Lambert, combining an American central-hall layout and Federal-style Palladian portico with traditional Louisiana Creole cottage features, according to Wikipedia. That blend of Creole and American classical styles was considered unusual for 1820s New Orleans. The home's formal parterre garden, meanwhile, was created after 1833 by Swiss Consul John A. Merle and his wife Anaïs Philippon, who purchased the property from original owner Joseph LeCarpentier, per the Cultural Landscape Foundation. The garden was later restored based on an 1865 Notarial Archives drawing.
The house's most famous namesake, Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard, never actually owned the property. Per Koch and Wilson Architects, Beauregard rented rooms there for roughly 18 months between 1866 and 1868 while seeking work in New Orleans after the Civil War. Less widely known is that world chess champion Paul Morphy, considered the dominant player of the mid-19th century, was born at the Chartres Street property on June 22, 1837, while it was occupied by his mother's family, the LeCarpentiers, whose patriarch Joseph LeCarpentier was the home's original owner.
From Novelist's Home To Public Museum
Bestselling novelist Frances Parkinson Keyes purchased the house in 1948 and directed its restoration that same year, later establishing the nonprofit Keyes Foundation to manage the building. Following her death inside the home in September 1970, the foundation opened the property as a public museum, the architecture firm notes. Per BK House, the property is described as the first historic house saved from demolition in New Orleans.
The house was officially added to the National Register of Historic Places on November 20, 1975, and holds National Historic Landmark designation, a status that brings strict preservation standards for any exterior renovations. It also carries a distinction in the city's formal preservation record: in 1934, it became the first structure in New Orleans documented for the federal Historic American Buildings Survey, a project led by preservation architect Richard Koch, whose firm continues to serve as preservation consultant for the property today.
Craftspeople And Historians Take The Stage
The Beautiful Spaces lineup draws on that same tradition of hands-on stewardship. Speaker Robert Cangelosi Jr. is an architect and president of Koch & Wilson Architects, the firm that has worked on BK House restorations since 1945, and he served as lead architect restoring the landmark Cabildo after its catastrophic 1988 fire, according to New Orleans Magazine. Cangelosi has also taught historic preservation at Tulane University for more than two decades.
Fellow speaker Jeff Poreé is a fifth-generation master craftsman whose family plastering business runs a 15,000-square-foot casting shop in the Seventh Ward, specializing in historic ornamental plaster restoration for landmarks including Gallier Hall and the Cabildo, per the Preservation Resource Center of New Orleans. Poreé received the organization's Architectural Craftsmanship Award in 2020. Rounding out the panel are architectural historian and preservationist Ann Masson and Joanna Caprera, a Friends of the Cabildo tour guide and researcher, with the group set to bring together architects, preservation professionals, historians and craftspeople for the day-long program.
Wider Stakes For French Quarter Preservation
The symposium arrives amid heightened national attention on New Orleans preservation. In July, the World Monuments Fund placed the entire city on its Irreplaceable America list because of climate, infrastructure and housing threats facing historic neighborhoods like the French Quarter. That same month, Hoodline reported on controversy over restoration work at Madame John's Legacy, another historic Quarter landmark overseen by the Vieux Carré Commission — a debate that featured Masson among the preservationists weighing in, and one that underscores the stakes now surrounding BK House's own bicentennial-year discussion of stewardship.
Beautiful Spaces 2026 tickets are $65 for BK House members and $75 for non-members, with reservations due by September 15 and tickets available through bkhouse.org. The bicentennial celebration will continue beyond the symposium with a Soirée in the Vieux Carré planned for October 11, extending a year of programming built around a house that, through owners, tenants and a world chess champion born within its walls, has anchored its corner of Chartres Street for two hundred years.
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