Paul and Serena Snyder stand outside their home in Shreveport, La., Wednesday, Aug. 31, 2024.
Paul and Serena Snyder sit outside their home in Shreveport, La., Wednesday, Aug. 31, 2024.
Paul and Serena Snyder of Newport Beach, California, picked up and moved to Shreveport, to live in their dream home. Front foyer But they didn't do it on a whim. "He had his business, but there was something in our hearts that yearned for something else, and we were both very attracted to southern architecture, and so we would dream and look at pictures of columns and dormers," Serena said.
They began searching online a few years ago for houses in southern states. The South Highlands house they purchased was almost 100 years old, a red brick two-story in the Georgian Revival style built in 1926. Although the house has needed a few repairs, they fell in love with the white columns, the large front door, the shell above the door, the original hardwood floors and windows, the intricate woodwork, the arched doorways, the red brick, details like copper gutters and dentil molding, and the large backyard.
Original sconces adorn the dining room walls, and a concrete planter sits out front, in the same place it appears in a photo with the original owners. When they visited Shreveport to look at this and one other house in person, they spent a lot of time looking at the neighborhood. "We're like, 'This place is very enchanting.
No two houses are the same. It's a pretty nice place,'" Paul said. The amount of house they could buy affordably was a big draw.
The house has a foyer, formal dining room, living room, sunroom, elevator, three bedrooms, three full baths, a sleeping porch, a basement and a large attic. The two-car detached garage is original to the house and also includes a small apartment. "We feel like we won the lotto with it, you know," she said, noting the same size house in Highland Park in Dallas or in Atlanta would sell for millions of dollars.
"Before we moved here, and we were scaling down, we were in a one-bedroom apartment, and our apartment rent was more than our mortgage here for this house. So kind of that aspect was a no-brainer, but we also didn't know if our income would be the same. So that was the unknown.
" But Paul, who has his own handyman business, so far has plenty of work in the Shreveport market, with projects already lined up into the fall, he said. A window on the front exterior of Paul and Serena Snyder’s home in Shreveport, La., Wednesday, Aug.
31, 2024. The home was designed by architect Henry Schwarz, Serena told The Shreveport-Bossier City Advocate, who she said also designed the fire station on the corner of Oneonta and Line Avenue. According to a former resident of the house, Dorrie Thoma, the house was built by the Ober family on land purchased from a dairy farm.
Some of the property was later sold for more housing to be built in the area. Friends and family "thought we were crazy" and "making a mistake," she said. "They said, 'You're buying the house from 'The Money Pit,' referencing the movie.
" But not so, according to Serena. "This house has been so good to us. It's so solid, you know, for being a 100-year-old house.
Paul was working in homes in Newport Beach that are maybe built in the '80s that have slab leaks and all kinds of issues where, you know, a 100-year-old house, people think it's going to have a lot of problems, but knock on wood, we haven't had anything major happen that, you know, has scared us off." The house is still a work in progress, she said, and she is meticulous about every detail. They have been making repairs, painting and decorating, and remodeling the bathrooms since they moved in.
"The process of redoing has been really fun, the process of taking an old home and just making it our own, and just finding a way to make it still look old and traditional, but with a modern edge that kind of works, you know, so that it feels like a new home, but still has the character of the old," Serena said. "And what's cool about this property is, like, your imagination, you're not limited with your imagination. We didn't have that opportunity in California because we didn't have a house and a yard this size, because that wouldn't have been in our budget, but this is in our budget.
And we can be creative, and we can do things that we've always wanted to do, or things we see in a magazine, here." Paul is currently building a water feature and Serena wants to plant a garden. They say they love their house and living here, but have not been immune from being asked, "Why would you move to Shreveport?" They bring a fresh outside optimistic perspective.
They say they’ve met many nice people. They speak of "how all the trees are in an organic setting," versus the trees being planted in a row in a planned community where they came from, where "everything is very homogenized and looks the same." They note how people who grew up around here may be used to seeing these old, beautiful homes, but they have an affinity and appreciation for them because where they lived "was very modern and everything’s new," she added.
"I love how everybody really takes pride in the front of their homes, and how they garden is really important to them. And that's just a reflection of, you know, why we fell in love with the community and what we saw when we came here, and it's just natural beauty," Serena said. "It's like we saw the beauty, and it'd be nice if other people — who do love it here and have to live in the community and all these neighborhoods — saw that people actually really do want to come here to live a life, a nice life, and come from a place that had everything and still love this.
"You know, hopefully it inspires people to love where they live. And maybe more people will come if they see how affordable it is, a big house like this, and communities grow that way." They are also optimistic about current and future efforts to clean up Shreveport, improve infrastructure and restore communities.
She noted that everyone plays a part — government and businesses and individuals. "Let's be contagious about beautifying everything, you know, that would just be so cool.".
