Interior Description Robert A. Grinnan House New Orleans Louisiana
On the interior there are two stairways, the main one curving gracefully up from the entrance hall. The floors are 2" oak boards. All of the walls and ceilings are smooth finished plaster except in the dining room, which is papered.
The doors and doorways throughout the house exhibit a unique unity. They are six-paneled throughout, and are made of either cypress or mahogany. Downstairs these doors are natural, stained dark, while upstairs they are painted. Throughout the downstairs, the architraves repeat the crossette motif of the exterior entrances. The architraves of the interiors of the rooms are plain, but on the hall side the decorative scroll and shell motif of the entablature of the entrance is repeated. Upstairs, the door trim moldings are identical to those below; executed, however, in vertical and horizontals instead of the Greek-key design.
The main rooms on the first floor are enriched chiefly by the cornice moldings. Here again the same general profile is maintained and dentils are incorporated throughout. Additional enrichment occurs in the two parlors where the dentil is combined with bead and spool above and acanthus leaf below. In the second parlor a frieze of widely spaced rosettes is added. On the second floor, room cornices have an elaborate profile without benefit of additional motifs.
One of the outstanding decorative features on the interior is the use of comparatively flat pilasters framing the opening between the entrance hall and the back hall leading to the rear parlor. The Corinthian capitals on these pilasters are of delicately carved cypress and echo the columns of the entrance portico. These pilasters are particularly effective in the vista from the parlor looking toward the stairs with the flat scroll carving on the stringers.
Modern electric lighting and air-conditioning have been installed in this house. In addition to central heating, there are six fireplaces downstairs and five upstairs. Several of the marble mantelpieces are original, as is the brick fireplace in the kitchen.
In addition to the main house, there are two outbuildings. The first is a two-story carriage house at the head of the slate driveway leading from Prytania Street. There is a wooden balcony, as well as wooden stairs, on the Philip Street side of this structure. The other building is the two-story garconniere, which is an elegant, stuccoed, brick structure with slender cast-iron columns supporting the unroofed balcony with its delicate cast-iron railing. The cubic mass is crowned with a simply profiled cornice. This garconniere is notable for its simplicity of mass and the refinement of its proportions.
