Colonel Short’s Villa

The cast-iron fence surrounding Colonel Short’s Villa features a distinctive pattern of morning glories and cornstalks. In eighteen fifty-nine, Colonel Robert Short commissioned this fence from a foundry in Philadelphia to surprise his wife, who missed the cornfields of her Kentucky home. While the villa serves as a prime example of the Italianate style in the Garden District, the ironwork remains the most photographed detail. It arrived by boat, creating a sudden, metallic harvest in the middle of a New Orleans neighborhood.