FEMA to rebuild historic St. Tammany home

SLIDELL, La. – FEMA says it will pay to rebuild one of St. Tammany oldest and most historic homes.

The Cousin House along Bayou Liberty near Slidell was heavily damaged by Hurricane Katrina. For more than four years, the homeowners battled with FEMA, and got the good news earlier this month.

"That was on Friday the 13th," said Charlotte Collins, "and it was fantastic."

Collins' father, Bill Lowry, bought the house in the mid 70s with little knowledge of its historic significance.

The front of the home faces Bayou Liberty. It was built in roughly 1787 by a French entrepreneur named Francois Cousin. Cousin used clay from a pond on the property to make bricks. After the great fires in New Orleans in 1788 and 1794, bricks made at the Cousin House were used to build the St. Louis Cathedral and much of the French Quarter.

"This area right here was pretty historic," Lowry said. "Although it never got any credit for it, nobody knew about it. Nobody said anything about it."

Katrina poured 5 and a half feet of water into the house and unearthed dozens of bricks around the property.

FEMA will pay to raise the home, but the Cousin House brings unique issues. Because it's officially registered as a historic Creole cottage, the home cannot be put on stilts.

"It cannot become a plantation home, i.e. have a layer underneath it,” Collins said. "So instead, the ground has to come up."

The New Orleans foundation company Abry Brothers will move the home and then build a gradually rising, 8- to 9-feet-tall mound, raise the Cousin House, and  then move it on to the top of that mound.

The concern becomes the interior of the home, built in the classic "brick between the posts" style, which means between the posts of a classic wood frame are bricks, which were also made on the property.

"The problem here is not only are those bricks soft, because they were handmade bricks, but instead of having mortar like most bricks do, they had clay,” Lowry said.

Greg Abry from Abry Brothers said his company has moved and raised many French Quarter homes, which closely resemble the Cousin House, both in age and in style. He said they will build a new wooden framework inside the home to stabilize it as it's moved, raised and moved back on the newly built mound.

Abry also said he's confident the Cousin House will not be damaged in the move.

The work should begin in early December, and could be completed sometime in the summer of 2010. FEMA is putting up roughly $900,000 to pay for the project.