Samuel Wilson, Jr. of Koch and Wilson designed the floating staircase in 1932.
The music room’s solid oak c.1900 German Steinway, the only piece of furnishing that came with the house.
The St. Charles Avenue facade of the Thomas Sully-designed Colonial Revival incorporates Ionic pilasters and a central pediment. The symmetrical clapboard façade was modeled after the Longfellow House in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Samuel Wilson Jr. of Koch and Wilson designed the graceful floating staircase in 1932.
The grand center hall features a Louisiana landscape mural by artist Auseklis Ozols.
The center hall with its Louisiana landscape mural by artist Auseklis Ozols.
Darryl and Louellen Berger sit on an English reproduction bench created by New Orleans cabinetmaker Denis O’Regan.
English Country floral chintz creates a canopy across the solarium ceiling.
Dutch tiles, pottery, and antique copper molds accent the walls of the pale wood kitchen.
Bergers- A recent acquisition from Neal Auction is the oil painting 'Streetcar Tracks,' by pastoral artist Richard Clague. It hangs over the mantel in the dining room.
The antique marquetry secretary was acquired on the couples' travels to England.
Cream silk curtains frame the parlor doors looking onto the bright florals of the solarium, formerly the port-cohere of the original house.
The parlor’s focal point is the hand-carved mantlepiece which supports an Austrian musical clock. A 1780 Sheraton tea table sits in the foreground atop the Savonnerie rug.
A whimsical Mardi Gras-themed table setting sits in the compass window niche of the dining room.
At the end of the center hall, a blue stained-glass window is centered above a fitted bar laden with Newcomb pottery.
A late 18th-century floral inlay demilune with plaster swags holds a display of Mardi Gras memorabilia.
A Dutch 17th-century embossed and painted leather folding screen in the parlor features pastoral scenes.
The guesthouse, built to house visiting grandchildren, features a galley kitchen, bedroom, and attic playroom with a reading nook.
Mardi Gras memorabilia displayed on the table in the center hall includes a special Muses shoe made to honor the Skeleton House.
Samuel Wilson, Jr. of Koch and Wilson designed the floating staircase in 1932.
The St. Charles Avenue facade of the Thomas Sully-designed Colonial Revival incorporates Ionic pilasters and a central pediment. The symmetrical clapboard façade was modeled after the Longfellow House in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Samuel Wilson Jr. of Koch and Wilson designed the graceful floating staircase in 1932.
The grand center hall features a Louisiana landscape mural by artist Auseklis Ozols.
The center hall with its Louisiana landscape mural by artist Auseklis Ozols.
Dutch tiles, pottery, and antique copper molds accent the walls of the pale wood kitchen.
Cream silk curtains frame the parlor doors looking onto the bright florals of the solarium, formerly the port-cohere of the original house.
At the end of the center hall, a blue stained-glass window is centered above a fitted bar laden with Newcomb pottery.
A Dutch 17th-century embossed and painted leather folding screen in the parlor features pastoral scenes.
The guesthouse, built to house visiting grandchildren, features a galley kitchen, bedroom, and attic playroom with a reading nook.
Mardi Gras memorabilia displayed on the table in the center hall includes a special Muses shoe made to honor the Skeleton House.
Much has been written about the stately 1869 Colonial Revival home overlooking St. Charles Avenue and State Street, but not so much on how the couple who reside behind its circular double gallery and cast iron railings have made the house a home.
Developer Darryl Berger and wife, Louellen Berger, purchased the house in 1978 and immediately began a painstaking, yearslong restoration. For the update, the Bergers enlisted New Orleans architect and preservationist Barry Fox to restore the stately manse's glamorous past but, even more importantly, to create a space befitting their growing family.
The mansion, now commonly known as the Skeleton House, after Louellen Berger’s famously witty Halloween display, was first known as the Castles House, named after John Wesley Castles Sr., president of Hibernia National Bank. It was Castles who commissioned famed New Orleans architect Thomas Sully to design and build it over a century and a half ago.
The music room’s solid oak c.1900 German Steinway, the only piece of furnishing that came with the house.
Today, the couple's four adult children and their families make frequent visits. While the formal dining table continues to be festively set for themed dinner parties, and the mahogany sideboard is readily stacked with china and silver, because of the COVID-19 shutdown, the place-card names above the settings are chiefly close family.
Some of that is changing, however, for Mardi Gras 2022. While the couple has stayed away from most of the balls, parties and events, Louellen Berger is still an active member of the krewes of Iris, Red Beans and House Floats.
Her duties as an Iris float captain have practically taken over the house’s center hall. Amid the English Regency and European antiques of the surrounding formal rooms, the hall's Regency benches are covered in rows of individually labeled plastic bags, each filled with one of her rider’s necessities, including matching wigs and entrance bracelets.
Darryl and Louellen Berger sit on an English reproduction bench created by New Orleans cabinetmaker Denis O’Regan.
If that weren't enough, the former fashion director of D.H. Holmes has also spent hours creating her “Maison Masquerade” Yardi Gras house float. The work of transforming Christmas nutcrackers into Carnival court jesters took over floor space in the back of the house and created a veritable obstacle course of glue guns, white-gloved doll hands and giant round beads blocking egress.
In fact, most of the creative decor that the public flocks to view outside the well-known home during Halloween, Christmas and Carnival is made by Louellen Berger, right there, on the floor of the Dutch-tiled kitchen.
There was much debate between the couple before that first renovation as to whether they could, or should, ever change the perfect symmetry of Sully’s design. But, with a growing family of young children back then, practicality won out.
"We bought the house in the fall; we then gutted and renovated staying within the original footprint," said Louellen Berger. "The rear of the house back then was a small kitchen, small back entry room, and another small room that must have been used as a bar, plus a rather large first-floor laundry room."
English Country floral chintz creates a canopy across the solarium ceiling.
They combined the disjointed maze of rooms into a cohesive space that became the family’s first kitchen and den. The current island and corner dining booth were added at a later date.
Interior designer Darrell Schmitt added ornate plaster moldings and medallions to all three formal rooms: The parlor and music room, which face St. Charles Avenue, and the dining room that sits behind the music room. These areas were swathed in yards of muted silks, rugs and furnishings befitting the house's origins. A mix of period and timeless décor was painstakingly selected to create both simplicity and elegance in the formal rooms, which took almost three years to complete.
A Louisiana landscape mural by artist Auseklis Ozols, founder of the New Orleans Academy of Fine Arts, was chosen to adorn the expansive center-hall walls and 14-foot ceilings out of necessity — the space was simply too big to fill with furniture and artwork.
Bergers- A recent acquisition from Neal Auction is the oil painting 'Streetcar Tracks,' by pastoral artist Richard Clague. It hangs over the mantel in the dining room.
The resulting bayous and moss-draped oaks extend almost the length of the house and up the circular floating staircase, designed by Samuel Wilson Jr., of New Orleans' storied architectural firm Koch and Wilson. The graceful staircase was a modern addition in 1932. The mural includes portraits of the couple and their young children near the entranceway, while blue sky and clouds follow the stairs to the second-floor landing.
Today, it's near these clouds that you'll find a sitting area surrounded with rows of framed photos documenting the exploits of the family's children. Here, above the formal rooms and antiques, are bedrooms filled with bunk beds and walls adorned with memorabilia, vintage collegiate flags and class banners.
Upstairs renovations over the years have included upgrades to each bedroom, as babies became teenagers and then young adults. A major gutting and renovation of the master bedroom and bathroom took place in 2015.
A late 18th-century floral inlay demilune with plaster swags holds a display of Mardi Gras memorabilia.
"Every painting in my bedroom is Alexander Drysdale," said Louellen Berger. "I really love Alexander; he's serene. He passed away in the '30s, but I really like his muted colors."
The furnishing are mainly English Regency, some reproduction, and European antiques from the couple's travels abroad. The walls are predominantly covered in muted 19th- and 20th-century oils of historic New Orleans and Louisiana landscapes, many by Drysdale and a new favorite by Richard Clague. Moss-covered oaks are a recurring theme.
The most recent project was an overhaul of the guesthouse, completed just before the COVID-19 shutdown hit. Once again, construction was planned to accommodate family. The long, low attic was repurposed into a combination nursery and playroom for the Bergers' youngest grandchildren. The room is lined with trundle beds, a children's reading nook and plush toys, and a foldout crib is at the ready. The older of the 11 grandchildren sleep in their parents’ old bunk beds in the main house.
The antique marquetry secretary was acquired on the couples' travels to England.
The guesthouse was built in 1990, a few years after the Bergers acquired the vacant lot next door, greatly expanding the size of the property and enabling them to tear down an old garage that blocked the light and was almost on top of the house. A portion of the guesthouse’s first floor is an art studio/workroom where the famed satiric Halloween skeletons and other holiday decorations are stored.
The focus on family life is evident inside the main house, too. Amid the elegant furnishings, what brings the biggest smile from Louellen Berger is a crib she never seems able to retire. The baby bed-changing table sits downstairs, almost in the hallway and off the kitchen, ready and waiting for the youngest grandchild.
While many of the spaces continue to evolve out of necessity, at the front of the house, the formal spaces were finished, after much work, long ago.
The parlor’s focal point is the hand-carved mantlepiece which supports an Austrian musical clock. A 1780 Sheraton tea table sits in the foreground atop the Savonnerie rug.
While showing the house, the couple still conveys the deep thought put forward during their restoration, both on the house itself, and the individual pieces chosen to furnish it. Many acquisitions were mulled over for years.
Darryl Berger's narrative about the house's contents is rich with detail and he is clearly humbled to be its caretaker. Take the Waterford chandelier in the dining room. It's the lone survivor of a matching pair that originally hung in the adjoining music and dining rooms. He explained with dismay the intricate mechanics of how one fell, and what its loss means to the house historically.
"It was a matching pair, which is really hard to find," he said. "Over the years, eventually, sadly, the vibration of the streetcars loosened it."
The music room features an oak German Steinway piano, the only furnishing that came with the house. Darryl Berger has formed a deep interest in its history and is well-versed in its inner workings.
"It's 1900, turn-of-century," he said. "But what’s interesting is that it's actually considered a full modern movement of a Steinway. The fundamental way it's constructed and strung results in full modern resonance."
A whimsical Mardi Gras-themed table setting sits in the compass window niche of the dining room.
The most impressive pieces in the house may be the two 17th-century Dutch hand-painted leather screens in the front parlor. They were acquired overseas years ago but had to be restored after Hurricane Katrina, when the loss of air-conditioning caused them to be damaged by heat and humidity. The cellar, a rarity in New Orleans, was flooded then, too. The resulting moisture intrusion wrought havoc on the house and some of its antiques.
It was only a few years before Katrina that the Bergers finally had decided to extend the house’s original Thomas Sully footprint, almost tripling the size of a tiny office, and turning it into their present-day den. It was also about that time that they removed the old rectangular pool and installed a more practical 20-meter lap pool.
It’s near the door leading to that pool, at the end of the lengthy center hall, that Darryl Berger gingerly steps over his wife's latest art projects on the way to swim his morning laps.
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