James Freret


James Freret was an American architect who practiced in New Orleans, Louisiana, prolific in designing many homes in that area.

About

Freret was born in New Orleans, Louisiana to Livie Freret and James P. Freret. His cousin William A. Freret, also an architect, and son of New Orleans mayor William Freret, redesigned the State capitol after the Civil War and headed the Office of the Supervising Architect in Washington, D.C.
He studied in the office of New Orleans architect George Purves early in his career. Freret went on to study architecture at the École des Beaux-Arts in the early 1860s with Charles-Auguste Questa. He returned to the United States due to the Civil War, joining the Confederate Army's engineering corps. He was wounded in the Siege of Port Hudson, and in 1865 returned to New Orleans to open his own architecture practice.

Select works