New Orleans cottage calls traveling family back home. | Entertainment/Life
Three-year-old Olivia Ozoral has traveled to 17 countries, more than most adults can hope to experience in their lifetime. The jet-setting toddler’s parents, Cemal and Claire Ozoral, have visited 24 countries in the 10 years they have been together.
They keep track of the countries their young daughter has visited with them via a world map over her bed. Each place they have gone is marked with a small glass pin.
“Travel is our family hobby,” said Claire Ozoral, a clinical pharmacist supervisor in the specialty pharmacy at Ochsner Foundation Hospital. “We want Olivia to understand other cultures and customs.”
The Ozorals’ two-bay Craftsman-style cottage in Lakeview was built in 1908 on a corner lot.
Home with a history
The family moved into their two-bay Craftsman-style cottage in Lakeview when Olivia was 2 weeks old. Situated on a corner lot and built in 1908, long before most of the soil upon which Lakeview rests had been pumped dry, the home is shaded by a trio of finely developed crape myrtle trees with exceptionally high canopies.
The home, initially built as a double, would have been one of the first built in the area, when it was still quite rural and seafaring traffic passed just feet away from the front door through the New Basin Canal. The canal connected to a turning basin at present-day Rampart Street and Howard Avenue.
The gleaming hardwood floors throughout the home were carefully salvaged by the previous homeowner, who restored the house after Hurricane Katrina. The built-in shelving in the dining room displays ceramic plates collected on the family’s world travels.
The area’s very first cottage was built in 1905 on nearby Julia Street (now West End Boulevard) as an office and tool house for workers clearing the swamps and building roads in service to Charles Louque’s New Orleans Swamp Land Reclamation Co. (later renamed The New Orleans Land Co.).
A small town kind of place
Claire Ozoral grew up between Lakeview and Old Metairie, and her family’s history tracks closely to the development of both the city and the neighborhood. Her maternal grandmother’s ancestors were among the first to arrive in New Orleans from Strasbourg, France, in the early 1700s. That same grandmother built a home in Lakeview during its height of development in the 1950s.
The spacious primary bedroom is bathed in natural light and overlooks an expansive side yard. The pelican painting is by Donna Barron of Pineville.
The Ozorals purchased their 2,100-square-foot home in 2022. Matthew Oertling had restored the house in 2008 after it flooded with 11 feet of water following the Hurricane Katrina levee failures, and then lived there with his wife and children. Claire Ozoral and Oertling’s parents were close friends, and their children grew up together.
An early start traveling
Olivia made her first trip abroad with her parents when she was 11 months old. The family visited Iznik, Turkey, from which both of Cemal Ozoral’s parents immigrated to the Baton Rouge area, where he was born and raised. His extended family remains in Iznik, and the Ozorals visit every couple of years.
The room just inside the front door is devoted primarily to displaying pottery and keepsakes from the family’s world travels, as well as Claire Ozoral’s childhood piano that will soon become her daughter’s.
“Before it became known as Iznik, it was known as Nicaea,” said Cemal Ozoral, a petroleum engineer with the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement. “It was here that the Nicene Creed was developed,” he said.
Developed in 325 C.E. by a council convened by the Roman Emperor Constantine, the Creed is the foundational statement of Christian faith.
“Nicaea became known as Iznik when it was captured by the Ottoman Turks in 1331,” said Cemal Ozoral.
Iznik is renowned for its pottery, which was first produced in the 15th century. Cemal Ozoral’s uncles still make an evolved form of the pottery, and collections of their work adorn the Ozorals’ Lakeview home.
The family’s casual and comfortable den is a welcoming domain for their Ragdoll cat, Elsa, and Othello, a 13-year-old Labrador mix. Elsa was gifted to the family by Claire Ozoral’s brother, who has an affinity for exotic felines.
Pottery is the family’s collectible of choice, and assemblages of commemorative plates from their worldwide travels are on display throughout their open kitchen and living room. The front door of the home opens into a room that serves as a display area for pottery from Iznik, souvenirs from world travels and works by artist Jenise (also known as Clay Creations) of Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, depicting institutions specific to New Orleans.
The Ozorals’ collection includes the likenesses of Deutsches Haus (where they are members), Baptist Hospital (where both Claire and Olivia Ozoral were born), Parkway Bakery and Tavern (a favorite place) and Our Lady of Holy Rosary Church (where Cemal and Claire Ozoral were married), as well as other local landmarks important to the family.
These framed tiles come from Iznik,Turkey, Cemal Ozoral’s family’s hometown.
“Other than our pottery — and then even some of that — in our house is inherited, found or picked up on Facebook Marketplace,” said Claire Ozoral. “We spend all our money on travel. When we travel, we are part of a home swapping organization that makes travel more affordable and allows us to stay within a community and learn the customs.”
The family’s appreciation of foreign customs informs their appreciation of their Lakeview neighborhood.
“The European Third Space concept, where people share life and socialize in public places rather than alone in their homes, is important to us,” Cemal Ozoral said. “We love the walkability. We have put thousands of miles on Olivia’s stroller. We walk to City Park. We walk to Starbucks, which is the neighborhood hub. All the old men at Starbucks know Olivia’s name and are watching her grow up. They ask us where she is if she is not with us.
“In Lakeview, everyone is outside all the time. We love that energy.”
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