Peter Trapolin, a New Orleans architect acclaimed for his work in preserving buildings and designing structures that blended with their environments, died Saturday of cancer in his New Orleans home. He was 70.
“He was skilled as a classical architect, and he understood modern architecture, and he brought them together,” said Tony Gelderman, a businessman and preservationist. “He understood the vernacular of New Orleans, and he brought that to his practice.”
His firm, Trapolin-Peer Architects, which he founded in 1981, has designed buildings across the Gulf Coast. In New Orleans, the firm’s projects include the Sazerac House; the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation headquarters; the Historic New Orleans Collection; the Lafayette Hotel; Richardson Memorial Hall, where Trapolin studied architecture at Tulane University; and the 19th-century Warehouse District building that houses Pêche Seafood Grill.
That structure, which Gelderman and his wife, Katherine, owned, once housed the mortuary where Jefferson Davis was embalmed after the former Confederate president died in the Garden District.
Restoring it to its former glory was a challenge, Gelderman said. In addition to heavy termite damage, there seemed to be no way to tell how to proceed because an earlier owner had stripped the building of its distinctive ornamentation, including an elaborate balcony and detailed window treatments.
But luck was with Trapolin because he was given an old photograph of the structure at Magazine and Julia streets. “Peter was able to take the photograph and convert it into very accurate drawings and convert it back,” Gelderman said. “Very few people could have done that. It was a great accomplishment that I was privileged to see.”
Such scrupulous attention to detail was a hallmark of Trapolin’s work, said Paula Peer, who succeeded Trapolin as the firm’s president.
“He was a steward of preservation and advocating for the preservation of our historic city,” she said. “The buildings are the place where the culture happens. He had 45 years of expertise of modifying and updating these historic buildings and doing new construction in a historic context.”
“I think he loved the city more than anything,” said Kathryn LeMieux, a niece. “He wanted to restore and honor its history and legacy.”
A lifelong New Orleanian, Trapolin graduated from De La Salle High School and Tulane University. He was among the first to see the potential of the Warehouse District, which before the 1980s had been a collection of industrial buildings going to seed. In fact, Peer said, Trapolin’s first office had been a flophouse.
The 1984 world’s fair drew developers’ attention to that part of the city. Trapolin, who played a key role in its revitalization, bought a townhouse there and set up headquarters three blocks away for his firm, which employs 24 people.
A list of the firm’s local projects fills two pages on its website, trapolinpeer.com.
Trapolin’s style was never dictatorial, Gelderman said. “He didn’t fight with people. He guided them. He had a way of guiding you to the right results.”
“He was just a trusted adviser,” Peer said. “He was really smart, he was passionate, and he was a little bit shy, He had the right to carry his ego around, but he didn’t.”
His work took him to Texas, Colorado, Mexico and China. In a 2016 letter nominating Trapolin to be a fellow in the American Institute of Architects, fellow architect J. David Waggonner III praised his “innate ability for shaping and ordering the physical environment and its components into a congruent whole.”
“Whether the direction is determined to restore a historic state or to advance a more modern vocabulary, the result his work achieves is appropriate, seamless, harmonious and desirable,” Waggonner wrote. “He can be trusted to make the judgment calls vital to historic preservation.”
Trapolin, who was made a fellow — the organization’s highest honor — was a former president of the AIA’s New Orleans chapter and a former Preservation Resource Center board member. He served on committees of the Downtown Development District, the Louisiana Landmarks Society and the Bring New Orleans Back Commission, which was formed after Hurricane Katrina and the ensuing floodwaters ravaged the city.
Trapolin also was a volunteer architect with the preservation center’s Operation Comeback, which helped low-income home owners rehabilitee homes in historic neighborhoods.
A statement from his firm praised him as a “dedicated advocate who worked tirelessly to preserve the historic fabric of the city while contributing to a more sustainable and resilient New Orleans.”
Survivors include his companion, Leah Tubbs; four brothers, Miles, Edward and Neil Trapolin, all of New Orleans, and Charles Trapolin of San Francisco; and four sisters, Louise Kuzmich of Midland, Texas, Jeanne Kuehn of Dallas, Therese Trapolin of Hammond and Kathleen Trapolin Barbee of New Orleans.
Funeral arrangements are incomplete