Editor’s Letter: Divine Interventions

Back in 2021, recently vaccinated but not yet dining indoors, I came across a listing for a house in New Orleans. It looked like a typical shotgun from the late 19th century, a wooden box with some gingerbread filigree. But it was huge, as if someone constrained the proportions in Photoshop and dragged a typical home to four times its size. Swiping through photos, I realized that it contained a massive ballroom where a normal living room might be.

It got even weirder. The kitchen had a curved archway. And was that an omega symbol in the wallpaper? Some kind of signet or sigil in the parlor? The house became a bit of an obsession. What was this place? But as with many a Zillow romance, I cast it aside with barely an alert set.

I always wondered who bought it, however. Then, a couple of years later, I found out. John Cameron Mitchell, the creator of Hedwig and other culture-defining characters, had acquired the home, which, I learned, was formerly a church and then the local headquarters of the storied occultist group the OTO—sigils, go figure. (He told me he and the previous owners closed for $666,000.) Cameron Mitchell was in the process of renovating it, though, as you’ll see, some of its more esoteric details stayed.

When I visited in late October, the front door was open and neighbors were dropping in. Some were actors and entertainment-industry types, but others were woodworkers, stained-glass makers, designers, builders, DJs—creative people from around the city united by curiosity and a very strange, very welcoming place. In a city choked by gentrification, the house might have been sliced into a dozen short-term rentals, but Cameron Mitchell plans to keep it a gathering space, as it has been for at least a century.

Similarly, all of the homes in this issue represent a spirit of treating historic structures as material to be artfully reinvented but respected. In Todos Santos, Mexico, a chef reoriented a brick structure around an outdoor kitchen for entertaining guests. A three-story concrete addition, a mini tower, really, is completely concealed from the street but allows views of the ocean and spectacular sunsets. Meanwhile, in southern France, an artist turned an imposing, 1,000-year-old stone fortification into a home and studio. The walls are landmarked, so indirect natural light perfect for painting filters in through a series of carefully placed skylights in the roof.

Though they’ve all had creative updates, each of these homes retains something of its past life while providing a canvas for new ideas that I hope would work in any home, historic or otherwise.

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