When my wife and I got married in 1995, most of our overseas guests stayed at the St. Francisville Inn. Even twenty-three years ago the 1880 Steamboat Gothic-style inn—which always had a reputation as a quirky, rather than luxurious, place to lay one’s head—was looking frayed around the edges. So by the time it passed into the hands of new owners on October 1, the Inn’s public spaces and ten guest rooms were in definite need of tender loving care.
They’re getting it. In the two weeks since getting the keys, new owners Brandon Branch and Jim Johnston have wrought a transformation on the Inn’s street-facing public spaces dramatic enough to give locals a mild case of whiplash. Gone from the deep front porch are the thicket of potted plants and mismatched office furniture—replaced by elegant white rockers. The gravel parking lot has vanished beneath a layer of topsoil upon which a sweeping lawn is being planted. Inside, in room after room, hardwood floors are being repaired, walls refinished, and decades worth of “Band-Aids” (Branch’s word) torn off to reveal a hidden grandeur that few former guests would have suspected lurked within. “It needed so much,” said Branch, “but its bones were fine; underneath, this building is such a diamond in the rough.”
While he is new to St. Francisville, Branch isn’t new to Louisiana or to the process of discovering—and polishing—the uncut gems of Southern architecture. He was born and raised on a farm in Washington Parish—where his parents still live—and for the past eighteen years he and his husband, Jim Johnston, have been based in Savannah, Georgia, where Branch found fame first as head of his own interior design firm and more widely as head designer for the popular Bravo TV series Southern Charm Savannah. So can fans of Southern Charm’s first and second seasons look forward to seeing Branch’s vision for the St. Francisville Inn take shape on-screen? “Well, we’re still under contract, so maybe,” he mused. “We’ll see if they give us a Season 3.” Currently the Inn is still accepting guests willing to forgive the ongoing renovations to the main house and courtyard pool, which Branch and Johnston anticipate completing by January. Then the guest wing will close for three months while each of eleven guest rooms is comprehensively re-made. Look for a grand re-opening around April 15, 2019. stfrancisvilleinn.com or (225) 635-6502.
