John Havenstrite chose to move back to New Orleans after his 23 years in Austin, Texas came to an end.
“It was time to come home,” he said. “I moved to the Point because I had grown up in Algiers, and I really wanted to be back. I also bought this house sort of as ‘kid bait.’ A lure to get my children to come visit.”
His children are a 21-year-old daughter who attends Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, California, and a 23-year-old son who attends SCAD (the Savannah College of Art and Design) in Savannah, Georgia.
“They both visited over the summer for a bit, and they both loved it here,” John said.
The house John bought in November 2025, had been mostly unoccupied for five or six years. Before that it had been a double converted to a single by removing the wall between the two front rooms of the house to create one giant living space. An enormous crystal chandelier anchors the room.
On the left side of the house, pocket doors lead to a dining room, then to the library, and then to a spacious and contemporary kitchen. John converted what had been a small workstation in the kitchen into a dry bar and liquor pantry.
Pocket doors on the right side of the front room lead to a large primary suite, with a bedroom, bath, and an enormous walk-in closet.
Most noticeable in the bedroom are the overlapping Turkish and Afghani kilim rugs on the floor in a variety of patterns and hues. Also notable is a flour-sack quilt made by John’s grandmother that drapes the foot of the bed.
“The people who lived here before me had a bed-and-breakfast, and installed a little kitchenette on the right side of the house,” John explained. “I think I’ll keep it - it’ll be for the convenience of my children, and other guests when they’re visiting.”
The back room of the house is intimate and quiet, ideal for watching television or reading. A dozen blue ball mason jars lined up at the base of a bank of windows contain treasures John’s children collected when they were little: rocks and shells and acorns and other miscellanea they found interesting.
The windows afford a view of the rear porch, a garden, and what looks like an oversized shed. “The shed was built around the same time as the house to conceal two outhouses, which are both still there, John explained.”
John is a connoisseur of art. Many of the works in the house are from Key West where he has a connection. Some are by self-taught artists, and still others are by prominent painters.
The six portraits in a sitting area adjacent to the kitchen are by Jack Baron, a self-taught Key West artist who is now deceased.
“Jack had an antique store at a bus stop, and every now and then he’d stop what he was doing and paint portraits of people waiting for the bus,” John explained. The portraits are striking in their composition and in their color choices.
There are two immense canvases by Greg Lofgren, an active Houston artist and designer.
The Lofgren painting in the John‘s bedroom is in blue-gray-green tones and somewhat foreboding, but the one in the library is in bright red, very lively.
“I actually tore out shelves in the library to make room for the painting. I feel like it works better this way,” John said.
Of his entire collection, there’s one piece that John loves, especially. It is a white piece of card stock bearing the words: “I AM A MAN.”
“It is a sandwich board that was worn by men in the 1968 Memphis sanitation workers’ strike. That was where the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “Mountain Top” speech. And that was where he was assassinated,” John explained.
“At the end of the march, marchers simply discarded the placards, and someone retrieved this one,” John said. “Every time I look at it, I’m moved.”