When Charlene Moreau Hazen returned home to New Orleans, the city that she’s loved from her birth, she brought with her a soon-to-be indoctrinated California-born partner, Chris Hazen.
Married in 2018, the Hazens were under contract in 2019 for a house in Newport Beach when the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic ushered in the freedom to work remotely. “It occurred to us simultaneously,” said Charlene Hazen. “What the hell are we doing here?”
Charlene and Chris Hazen at their Uptown home.
So, while others were leaving cities for the safety of the suburbs, the Hazens reversed the trend. They rented a place off of State Street and spent their evenings walking around, thinking of finding the perfect 300-year-old house. “It’s just part of the deal,” Charlene Hazen said.
But it was Chris Hazen who found a 3,100-square-foot house of new construction with a design aesthetic inspired by a four-bay Greek Revival Creole townhouse, complete with cast-iron balustrades, in an Uptown neighborhood.
The house was in a location perfect for a couple with a young son.
Driving passions
Charlene Hazen is a former private chef, designer of luxury hotel spaces, and the current vice president of brand strategy for a global advertising agency with headquarters in New York and Paris. Chris Hazen is a senior vice president for a financial technology company.
The design of the 3,100-square-foot new house is inspired by a four-bay Greek Revival Creole townhouse, complete with cast iron balustrades.
The Hazens are people who have learned to accommodate and encourage each other’s passions. (She favors wearing designer cocktail dresses “statement pieces,” bare feet and fine French heirloom jewelry to greet guests on a random, rainy, Friday morning.)
The couple met online while living in California, and the relationship rapidly progressed, with them moving in together into Chris Hazen’s Newport Beach digs within months.
When they first combined households, she brought with her few possessions, save for a battered oak midcentury breakfront cum entry table, and a broken settee that made no sense at all to Chris Hazen. The settee was non-negotiable to the woman who would soon become his bride.
The repaired and reupholstered settee that Charlene Hazen has long loved.
The settee‘s peculiar presence in their lives soon became a source of contention.
“It just kept moving around with us everywhere we went,” said Chris Hazen. “All I could ever ask was ‘why’?’ The thing was horrible, a pile of junk,” he said, side-eying his wife. The offensive settee has since undergone a meticulous restoration at the hands of Aguilar’s Upholstery on Oak Street.
A Carrera marble island with waterfall edges highlights the gleaming kitchen, which can be entered from either side, through the dining room or entry hall. It opens into a great room that overlooks the yard.
Charlene Hazen’s passion for New Orleans (if not for the settee) soon became a shared one.
“I brought him home to New Orleans. He was blown away. I knew he was The One when we were seated for breakfast at Brennan’s and he asked where we were going to lunch, then dinner. He had yet to figure it out, but I knew right away he was one of us.
“I do my share of online shopping. It turns out my husband was the best thing I ever found online.”
Building a community
Frequent entertainers, the house’s location inside the “box” that locks down much of Uptown throughout Carnival was a selling point.
“Living in a 300-year-old city in a new house was odd for me at first,” said Charlene Hazen, “but I came to realize that every house here was once a new house, and it took care and time to build a natural patina and make its place in its neighborhood. That’s really the phase we are in now.”
Mandevilla plants in the front garden were gifts from Charlene Hazen’s mother and grandmother. Passersby often stop to take photos.
Their son Jack is in school nearby. “I can wave to the children during fire drills, and we can be an emergency pickup for so many of our neighbors. We are so proud to be able to do that,” she said.
“We just planted fruit trees along the street so students can grab a satsuma on their walk home. We also put in a variegated pink lemon and a lime tree. We got a postcard from someone in the neighborhood saying thank you for doing that for the community. That really filled my heart. Someone saw and felt what we are trying to make here.”
Two Mandevilla plants in the front — each a gift from her mother and grandmother — seem to have a following as well, with people stopping on walks to take photos, she added.
The formal dining room stars a neoclassical style Russian rosewood table with an ornate gold-leaf pedestal base. The art is a series by local artist Josh Hailey depicting the sun, moon and stars.
New build, old soul
Designed and constructed by Crescent City Developers, the home’s architecture fits right in with the neighborhood while offering every modern amenity. The living space is situated around a central area for entertaining with an open kitchen and a great room looking into the back yard.
“The fact that he found this house and we get to be a part of this neighborhood just leaves me gobsmacked,” Charlene Hazen said. “It has everything we wanted in an old house — heart pine floors, up and down front galleries, high ceilings, a formal dining room — but the house even came with a home warranty. That’s unheard of in New Orleans.”
She is responsible for the design aesthetic in the home. Her approach is to blow the bank on something splendid, pay it off, and do it again and again. All Chris Hazen can do is hold on and trust his wife.
Doorman Designs created the four-poster bed, based on its design for those in the Henry Howard Hotel, where the Hazens held their four-day wedding weekend.
“I know she’s got this,” he said.
The result is a home stocked 100 percent with full silk draperies made by Leslie Walters, the same person who created draperies for Gallier Hall; a neoclassical style Russian rosewood dining room table with an ornate gold-leaf pedestal base; and a bed custom made by Doorman Designs to mimic the one in the room they shared at the Henry Howard Hotel on Prytania Street, where they hosted their four-day wedding weekend.
“He gets his lawn of zoysia grass,” Charlene Hazen said of her husband’s prized front lawn. “He worked particularly hard to learn the way of the Southern yard, coming from California. We got an anonymous note about the glory of the lawn, and it’s among his prized possessions.
“It is a running joke with Chris and all of his dad friends. His yard is superior to all. So now the student has become the teacher.”
