Peek Inside the Homes of Some of the South’s Most Creative People

The Louisiana jazz great Louis Armstrong lived in this three-story red brick house in the Corona neighborhood in Queens, New York, from 1943 until his death in 1971. Decorated with mid-century touches, the home is filled with Armstrong’s notes, reel-to-reel tapes, and mementos, and is now open to the public as the Louis Armstrong House Museum. 

For the majority of the forty-plus years that William Faulkner lived at Rowan Oak, his 1844 white-clapboard Greek Revival home in Oxford, Mississippi, he made a modest living off his writing, so he did the majority of the repairs and upkeep himself, including building the bookshelves in his library (pictured). 

James Gallier Jr. was one of the most prolific architects of nineteenth-century New Orleans, transforming the city with projects including the French Opera House and the Luling Mansion. His own home on Royal Street combines classical and Italianate details and Victorian and Rococo furniture. 

Although known as a wanderer, Ernest Hemingway lived in this eclectic, limestone house in Key West, Florida, from 1931 through 1940. Now open to the public as the Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum, the building is restored to look like it did when Hemingway lived there. 

Tommy Hilfiger’s mansion in Golden Beach, Florida, not only houses the fashion designer’s impressive Pop art collection but is a work of surprising art itself. Scratch-and-sniff wallpaper covers bathrooms, and the psychedelic media room (pictured) takes its inspiration from the Austin Powers movies.

Clementine Hunter (1886/1887–1988) lived and worked on the Melrose cotton plantation near Natchitoches, Louisiana, for over fifty years before teaching herself to paint, and later becoming one of the most renowned folk artists of the twentieth century. She eventually covered the walls of the onsite “African House” in murals of rural Louisiana life.

Architect Charles Moore was known as one of the godfathers of postmodernism. His Austin, Texas, home features a mixture of Spanish and German influences and is brightly decorated with Texas folk art.  

Elvis Presley’s Graceland in Memphis is the second–most-popular house museum in the country, second only to the White House. The decorous Colonial Revival mansion has twenty-three rooms, including the famous Polynesian-decorated Jungle Room, a mirror-covered TV room, and the colorful basement billiards room, pictured. 

Although far from the banks of the Mississippi River where he grew up, Mark Twain’s Victorian mansion in Hartford, Connecticut, housed the author while he wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

The Italian fashion designer Gianni Versace’s Miami Beach, Florida, mansion includes Roman frescoes, marble statues of Neptune and Medusa, and a pool constructed of thousands of 24-karat gold tiles. The property is now a five-star, twelve-suite hotel called Villa Casa Casuarina.

Life Meets Art: Inside the Homes of the World’s Most Creative People by Sam Lubell (Phaidon) Available to purchase now.