Over a decade ago, my boyfriend and I dipped our toes into the roiling hot tub that is home ownership. At that time, the Louisiana Housing Commission was offering a Soft Second program, a home-buying assistance loan which would pay up to $85,000, and after ten years of residency, the loan would be forgiven. A first-time home buying class and mountains of paperwork later, we suddenly found ourselves in a rush to choose a house before the program ended.
We narrowed our options online and one frenetic Saturday was spent visiting the final three. One was a 2bdr 1ba house in the Hollygrove neighborhood on Apple Street. Originally a 500 square foot shotgun, the house had an addition built out front, a long living room/dining room that stepped up to a modern kitchen with dark hardwood floors throughout. The house also had a big backyard with two mature oaks and a stone brick patio.
As we’d only ever visited the Hollygrove Farmers Market, we wanted to get a feel for the neighborhood, so we walked around a little and after only one block, stumbled upon the Ashton Theater.
Featuring a tall, pink facade with stepped ziggurat motifs typical of the Art Deco style, and a bright red and yellow marquee, the small neighborhood theater first opened its doors in 1927. While hundreds of these little theaters opened up across the state, the Ashton was unique in that it was designed by Ferdinand L. Rousseve, Louisiana’s first licensed African-American architect.
Born in the 7th Ward to Barthelemy Abel and Valentine R. (Mansion) Rousseve in 1904, Ferdinand’s life was one filled with civil, academic and pedagogic pursuit. Among numerous accomplishments after graduating from the Preparatory Department at Xavier University, Rousseve received a diploma in Mechanical Drawing and Elementary Machine Design from the Coyne Trade and Engineering School in Chicago, won a scholarship to MIT where he attained a BA in Architecture, and was the first person to complete a PhD in only four years at Harvard University.
Although he spent many years teaching, both at Harvard University in Washington D.C., and as Associate Professor and Head of the Fine Arts Department at Xavier University, he also devoted himself to helping underserved communities through the Urban League of New Orleans and Greater Boston. As a licensed architect in Louisiana and Alabama, Rousseve also designed homes and buildings, many of which were located in New Orleans. Examples of his extant projects include the Central Congregational Church on Bienville Street in the Treme, the Dr. Joseph Epps’ residence on Annette Street in Gentilly, and, of course, the Ashton Theater in Hollygrove.
A little over 5,000 square feet with a balcony, the single-screen cinema was owned and operated by the Fonseca family. The Ashton Theater served the Hollygrove neighborhood for close to 30 years, showing films like Citizen Kane and The Invisible Boy, until it finally closed in 1958.
No one bit when the building was put on the market, though the contents of the theater – including a Reproducto Pipe Organ with a roll frame (virtually identical to those used in Coinola coin pianos), which plays a multi-tune music roll – were later sold through an auction. The Ashton sat empty for nearly a decade until the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra purchased the old theater to use as its rehearsal hall after their former space, the St. Charles Theater was demolished.
In 1989, local visual artist and sculptor Lin Emery purchased The Ashton and used the space to construct the massive, kinetic sculptures she was known for. Finding inspiration through nature, Emery created large-scale, public artworks activated by water, wind, magnets and motors. One of her pieces titled Wave, a polished aluminum kinetic sculpture poised above a reflective pool, long held a spot in front of the New Orleans Museum of Art, and now resides in the Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden in New Orleans City Park.
When Emery passed away in 2021, her son Brooks Braselman who took over ownership of The Ashton, put the officially designated historical landmark (New Orleans HDLC) up for sale with hopes its new owner would keep the building’s legacy going and use the space for creative endeavors.
In the summer of 2023, local entrepreneur Janice Meredith purchased the nearly century-old theater, one she distinctly remembered from her childhood, as she grew up near the Hollygrove neighborhood. Her intention was to use The Ashton in part as a manufacturing and retail space for her business selling patches and embroidered clothing, and leaving the rest to serve as a co-working/retail space for other creative entrepreneurs.
In a NOLA.com article, Meredith claimed other artists would be able to book the extra space through an app called EntrepreNOLA, turning it into a “true community asset for residents in the neighborhood.” She also had planned to invest $400,000 to update the HVAC system and make the structure ADA compliant. As far as can be gleaned, none of her plans for a co-working space have yet come to fruition, but as is often said, good things come to those who wait.
It’s funny because I don’t often think about the house we never bought on Apple Street, but more often my mind wanders back to the daringly-Deco Ashton Theater and ponders its potential role in Hollygrove’s future.
*Originally published in the June 2025 issue of Where Y’at Magazine
