The term “camelback” is as familiar to New Orleanians as red beans and rice. This architectural vernacular, resembling a silhouette of a camel, is an addition on the back of a home that allows the street facing façade to maintain its historic massing and scale, and it’s a solution popular in our historic neighborhoods.
The problem it solves, however, is not unique to New Orleans: needing more space. More so than our friends in outlying suburbs, city dwellers are bound by narrow lot sizes forcing additional square footage on a second floor.
Camelback addition of our St.Roch project
Historic neighborhood context and scale
So how do you camelback a house? Is there only one way to do it?
We answer this question often in our practice, with camelback projects circulating through our office several times a year. There are general strategies that we usually follow, though we do look to create unique design solutions for every site and every client’s needs.
Rebuilding may be necessary.
We never stack a full story on top of a historic home without reinforcing the foundation and studs. Sometimes this requires removing the last room of the home, so that we can build the camelback portion new. This is often more cost effective than trying to retain the walls and floors of the old structure.
Maintain historic massing by retaining the first two rooms.
In most of our camelback projects, we try to retain as much of the historic home as possible. In historic neighborhoods, the historic landmarks commission will reject proposals of additions that do not maintain a sufficient amount of historic fabric.
Open floor plans rely on relocating kitchen.
A popular request is for an open kitchen-living-dining area, but our historic Victorian era homes make that condition difficult to achieve in the front of the home where historically-sized rooms remain intact. I almost never encourage blowing out interior walls of a historic home due to the structural need for interior walls to keep load paths going in the right direction. That means, to achieve an open floor plan, it’s usually best to use the rear of the home where we are building new.
Joists are our best friends.
From open floor plans to modern heating and cooling solutions, floor trusses can span further than typical dimensional lumber, can support walls upstairs without support below, and can accommodate ductwork and conduits, making these our go-to for camelbacks. As previously mentioned, the new portion of the home in the rear is better for an open kitchen, living and dining area, perfect for family gatherings.
Example Projects
The below plans illustrate a camelback conversion on St. Roch Avenue. The existing double shotgun Victorian home was converted to a 2,800 square foot, single-family home. The dashed red lines represent the amount of area that was demolished in order to achieve the addition.
The below project is our AIA award winning camelback in the Fairgrounds neighborhood. This project implemented a minor removal of an existing rear covered area and no portion of the historic home was removed to achieve this camelback.
The below project is a camelback conversion of an existing single shotgun home on Camp Street. The last room of the house was removed in order to gain additional 1,300 square feet.
For more information about camelbacks and an unconventional construction project where we implemented load bearing walls on the interior of the home, read Ingenuity of the Camelback. We love writing about our camelback projects, so if you have any questions or topics you would like us to write about, feel free to email us.