The Italianate double gallery house at 718 Pelican Avenue was built in 1871 by a ship captain for a wealthy local banker. For the past 40 years it has been home to Vinnie Pervel, a historic home renovator, and Gregg Harris, a psychotherapist who specializes in trauma recovery. Together, they have restored, renovated, and landscaped the property.
Both owners have a passion for Victorian design, antiques, and “anything old.”
When they acquired the property, it was blighted and covered with asbestos. Today, however, it’s the very picture of perfection.
One enters the property through a lush front garden, planted and maintained by Gregg. The garden is a riot of colors, textures, and fragrances, thanks to the Sylvester palm tree, sago palms, red Hawaiian ti plant, roses, passion flower vines, asparagus ferns, Ming ferns, a macho fern, wisteria, confederate jasmine, and allamanda that intermingle with abandon.
A pair of immense, ornate black iron urns flank the front steps, planted with cardboard palms, a variety of sago palms. Beveled and leaded glass in the front door refracts rainbows of light into the side hallway on the left side of the house.
Across from the side hall and the open stairs to the second floor is a formal double parlor with rooms connected via a broad plaster arch.
The two rooms feature Bradbury & Bradbury hand silk-screened wallpaper on the ceilings and walls. Stone mantels appear on both chimneys on the outside wall of the house. Each of the mantels has been hand painted to accentuate its Egyptian details.
Elaborate plaster ceiling medallions that appear in the two parlors were imported from Paris. They are gilded.
Beyond the double parlors one encounters the dining room, distinguished by reproduction Victorian chandeliers and wall sconces. The carved wood table and chairs typify the European antiques Pervel and Harris have coveted to furnish their home.
The kitchen stretches across the rear of the house. The is the guest lavatory features a pair of 250-year-old doors salvaged from a Dutch church.
The renovated kitchen is “old-world style” with cabinetry concealed behind antique hutches and French shutters. The appliances are "Heartland" Victorian Canadian reproductions.
The rear garden can be seen and accessed from the kitchen. Its collection of mature trees makes it feel like visiting a botanical garden. One will find 8 crape myrtles, one holly and one ginkgo there. Brick pathways – made with bricks salvaged from the removal of chimneys – lead throughout the garden.
The house has two staircases – the grand open one in the front of the house and an enclosed stair at the rear. The guest suite is situated at the rear of the second floor and is accessible by either stair. The guest bath features a period "water closet" and a six-foot-long claw-footed tub. The guest bedroom features a French bed from the 1830s and a ceiling mural that reproduces a work from the 1700s by Italian artist Giovanni Cipriani.
The second-floor office was designed and built by Vinnie to honor Gregg's German roots (he was born in Heidelberg to a career US military family). This "European Pub" style room also houses many of Vinnie's miniature car collection.
The primary bedroom sits at the front of the house on the second floor where it benefits from sunlight streaming in through floor to ceiling windows. Embellishments include hand poured plaster crown moldings and ceiling medallions, and an Italian lincrusta frieze.
Etched glass doors on the far side of the room are from Belgium and lead to the master bath, off-limits today because it is housing the family’s menagerie, including two Chihuahuas, DJ and Shay; a 12-year-old orange tabby cat, Baggy, adopted as a kitten from the streets; and a 15-year-old Mourning Dove named Poey who was saved as a featherless hatchling
during a severe summer storm.
The glass display cabinet on the ground floor in the side hall displays pieces of Vinnie’s costume from the year he was King of the Krewe of Armeinius. His costume was the "Royal Monarch,” fashioned after the monarch butterfly. And yes, the little boy in the photo atop the cabinet is Vinnie!