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NOLA Art House & Insane Tree House Just Listed For $475K

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The NOLA Art House, an 1870s Creole mansion-turned-artist colony known for its backyard playland — there is a tree house 50 feet in the air — has just hit the market for $475,000. The 5,943-square-foot space on Esplanade Avenue in Tremé is split up into about 17 private rooms with two kitchens and five bathrooms. The property was bought from the bank in February 2005 for $194,900 and in 2008 it was transferred to an LLC under John Orgon (the current owner) for $72,493. Obviously, there's no guarantee that the future buyer will carry on the art vibe, but the listing does hint that this place is a "great opportunity for buyers with a similar vision and interest in promoting artists." Also mentioned in the listing: a grain of salt rumor that this is the inspiration for the "House of the Rising Sun" song. The Times-Pic's art critic, Doug MacCash, took an entertaining tour of the tree house, shortly after the house's power plug was pulled due to code violations back in 2010, noting "The window shutters, steel stairways, aluminum ladders, fast-food playground equipment, and mismatched lumber that went into the Swiss Family Robinson/Road Warrior-style aerial architecture was salvaged from the post-flood wasteland of New Orleans."

· Listing: 1614 Esplanade Ave. [Gardner Realtors]
· Visiting Scott Pterodactyl's New Orleans tree house [NOLA.com]
· NOLA Art House goes dark, and cold, after city inspectors find code violations [NOLA.com]