Alexander PassikoffAuthor
A classic New Orleans home. Photo by Erin Mahoney with the Society for Photographic Educators
Amidst the numerous facades found throughout New Orleans’ uptown district, one may find a brightly colored pink shotgun house, raised on its foundation of brick, fronted by a row of columns that frame the house’s front door and three tall windows bracketed by pairs of colonial storm shutters. Past a row of purple flowers at the front of the yard, through a small, black gate, a winding brick path leads to the front steps of the house.
Since his retirement last year as a Tulane architecture professor of over 50 years, Milton Scheuermann Jr. now tends to spend more of his time at his uptown residence.
In the main sitting room at the front of the shotgun house, one finds a space embellished by a collection of early instruments (circa Renaissance onward) either bought or constructed by Milton over the years – a pair of lyres, a collection of various pipe and reed organs, and a replica harpsichord – Milton makes his way into the adjacent dining room.
“Everything in this room has something to do with someone I knew and things that I was primarily interested in” – gifts from family, friends, and fellow professors.
The medieval objects and scripts, as well as a small harmonium (reed organ) in the corner of the room, signify Milton’s ongoing enthusiasm for the medieval and Renaissance eras and the arts associated with these periods. Milton points out one small calligraphic piece on the mantle of the dining room’s fireplace – stating this tiny text was “the best [he’d] ever seen” – musing at what kind of pen must have been used to create such a “spectacular” piece. In reflecting on his appreciation and past teaching of calligraphy, Milton notes that interest in calligraphy has fluctuated over the years. He recalls several decades ago at Tulane, one semester in which over fifty students had registered for his calligraphy course, and the administration was forced to condense the roster by more than half.
The Harpsichord
When the question of which of the many objects throughout the house were his most treasured, Milton refers to the harpsichord located in the front room of the house – “I amazed myself,” he says.
The story behind this replica instrument is certainly remarkable. In the mid-1970s, Milton made arrangements for Early Music Consort of London to come play in New Orleans. The Consort was founded by two English musicians, its director, David Munrow, and conductor Christopher Hogwood – Milton hails these two figures as “the most spectacular instrumentalists of Early instruments that [he] had ever known.” In addition to his roles of conductor, writer, and musicologist, Hogwood also acted as the harpsichordist in the Consort ensemble. The Consort asked Milton if he and his associates could mange to have an antique or copy of an antique harpsichord; but New Orleans had none. “So I told them, ‘I’ll have to build one’ – which I did. It took me seven months to build that,” he says, motioning to the harpsichord in the next room. The construction process began at Yale, where Milton gained access to the university’s collection of instruments. The harpsichord had been measured and drawn full size by an aerial photographer – even showing the deformities due to the age of the instrument. Along with correcting these deformities, Milton used color photographs to imitate the instrument’s embellishments, rendering it an exact copy of the instrument that had originally been constructed by the Ruckers Family – renowned producers of early instruments, including “the best harpsichords that could be had at that time, around the early 17th century.” Milton proudly concludes his account by pointing out that all the instruments he has built have barely, if at all, deformed over the years. An architectural background definitely helps in construction projects such as this.
“It all requires drawing; and unfortunately, that’s all going out,” Milton says, reflecting on current shifts in the world of design.
“What I’ve learned, taught, and what architects did during my time of practice was completely different.” One of his past students, in fact, happens to be currently renovating a house he purchased across the street from Milton’s own. Milton takes some issue with contemporary architecture’s abandonment of prints and blueprints, noting that the contractor across the street uses an iPad (Milton has an iPad of his own; though it is not used for architecture work). “I still say the best thing that you can do with a client is make a drawing for them while you’re talking to them. You pull out a piece of paper and you make a drawing. You don’t say, ‘Well, let me go back and put it into the computer to come back with it another day.’” Milton’s extensive experiences as an architect and student of the old school have made a lasting impression on his concepts of architecture and design. “If anything, people should expect that architects know how to draw,” he says. “They have to have some knowledge of how to draw; I think that’s absolutely imperative. If you don’t have that, then you truly can’t call yourself an architect – I’m sorry, but I really feel concerned about that.” In exploring his origins in drawing and architecture, it becomes quickly evident how Milton came to feel the way he does.
“My early experience certainly influenced me in what I did.”
Growing up and attending grammar school in Gentilly, Milton names two of his childhood friends, August ‘Auggie’ Perez III and Eean ‘Jack’ McNaughton, as important companions throughout his early life. Interestingly enough, all three grew up to become architects.
Milton remembers August Perez Jr. as one of his earliest inspirations in architecture – recalling how he was “fascinated looking at the drawings he’d make on the drawing board in their home.” The Perez architectural business prospered both before and after August III succeeded his father, opening offices in over half a dozen cities countrywide, and funnily enough, the firm was later sold to a former student of Milton’s.
During his youth in Gentilly, “uptown was like another city; Lake Vista too.” Per August Perez Jr.‘s real estate insight, Milton’s family had purchased a cheap lot to develop in the east half of Lake Vista, for just under three thousand dollars. His family owned one of the first houses in the east Lake Vista. In graduating from high school years later, in 1951, Milton was granted a scholarship to Tulane University for $300 tuition per year; Tulane’s “outstanding school of architecture” only added to his desires to attend the university. After completing his education at Tulane, Milton was hired by a firm that retained an architect by the name of Lois Goldstein. Mr. Goldstein certainly left a lasting impression on young Milton, as both a draftsman and a gentleman.
“Lois Goldstein, he was such a gentleman of the old school.”
“I don’t think I ever saw Mr. Goldstein without a coat and tie on. Even when he didn’t come into the office, a few days when he didn’t feel well, I would go down to his house in the garden district and see him – he’d be sitting in a coat and tie.”
“We would go to lunch at a restaurant downtown called Colb’s, a German restaurant, on the 100 block of St. Charles right above Canal St. . . We used to talk, and he used to draw on the tablecloths in pen. He would always make sketches – I don’t know how they got rid of it or whether they saved it and framed it – constantly making sketches, and I thought it was spectacular. . . I used to go with Mr. Goldstein when we had things under construction. We would talk to the contractors. . . He would take a stick and draw lines in the mud – could you imagine doing that today?. . . We don’t have anyone like that now.”
In addition to acting as a mentor to Milton, Mr. Goldstein was one of the founders of Tulane’s architecture school and the original university architect at Dillard University – a position that Milton himself would years later take on for several decades.
Milton was mostly drawn to the position of campus architect by the cohesive design and classic aesthetics at Dillard. “The whole campus was designed with one design fashion in mind. They were all like classical buildings: each had four columns in the front; they were white and geometrically interesting – centerline and so forth – all of the buildings worked extremely well. Unfortunately, over the years – I retired from Dillard in 1990 – they had other architects design buildings, and they did not keep the same design in mind. They painted the buildings white just like all of the other buildings, but that’s about the only thing. They were built as individual buildings rather than buildings that fit in with the whole concept of what the architecture should look like.”
“With my retiring, everyone says, ‘You know, everyday is Saturday.’”
Though his stint as a professor and practitioner of architecture may be slowing down, Milton is still kept busy by his passions for magic and music – signified by many of the objects of decoration found throughout his residence and on his person. Milton wears two rings on his right hand: one, a wishbone ring, also known as the magician’s ring. The other ring is comprised of a dragon encircling an amethyst gem, the birthstone of a man born on Mardi Gras day – a bona fide New Orleanian. To this day, Milton acts as a co-director of New Orleans’ early music group, Musica Da Camera, but also as an officer for the Society of American Magicians, a member of the Knights of Slights as well as the International Brotherhood of Magicians.
Looking back on the course of his experiences, it becomes clear that classic traditions and elements of the old school have undoubtedly influenced Milton’s extensive career – in architecture, music, and mysticism.
As a boy, Milton’s parents would frequently take him to a theater adjacent to Lee Circle to see shows, movies accompanied by vaudeville acts in between screenings. He emphasizes his aversion to the term “trick” when it comes to magic and mysticism; these acts should thrill or entertain an active audience before deceiving or embarrassing participants. Elaborating on his ideologies behind magic and performing, Milton utters something quite striking, “I’m not doing it for myself, I’m doing it for them.” This statement is profound for the ways it can be applied to all of this polymath fields of expertise; they all rely on a collaborative essence. Architecture, music, and mysticism are all distinctly empowered by their participants.
