South Bluffs home frames sweeping river views
A home with panoramic views of the Mississippi River is a house that just keeps giving to its inhabitants.
“Peace. It gives you a peace,” the Rev. Audrey Gonzalez said. “The nice thing about this house is when I come in the back door and the garage and shut everything, it’s like the noise goes away ....
“You come into the house, and it’s the river. The trees and the river. That’s the thing that will be hard to give up.”
Gonzalez is selling 489 Tennessee St. after living in the contemporary home of tinted glass and stucco for 14 years. The Episcopal minister is swapping rivers and returning permanently to a smaller house overlooking the Rio de la Plata in Carmelo, Uruguay.
She feels called to the simpler lifestyle and continued service to the poor and imprisoned in the South American
country.
“I’m trying to do the best I can with that. I don’t think Jesus realized how hard it is to sell anything when you don’t want to sell it,” Gonzalez said with a smile.
Selling may prove to be harder for her than for the listing agents, Jennifer and Joel Hobson of Hobson Realtors. The 4,050-square-foot house has been on the market for just over a week for $1.15 million and already several people have expressed interest, Joel said.
“They’re trying to just decide if this is where they want to be,” he said of the prospects. “But they love the dramatic windows and all the views. It’s incredible.”
The home’s west wall of a dozen large glass windows gives to every floor and major room wide vistas, from the Harahan Bridge’s Big River Crossing on the left to the Hernando DeSoto Bridge to the right.
The top floor comprises a master bedroom suite with luxury bath, closet and office space.
The middle or main floor features a kitchen that opens to dining space and a sunken living room with gas fireplace.
And the ground floor offers two bedrooms, a bath and sitting room.
There are balconies in front and back and a lushly landscaped front patio.
Gonzalez prefers taking the stairs for good exercise, but an elevator serves all three floors.
The buttery tone of the maple floors mesh with the home’s light and airy interior. Even the glass-sided staircase with its maple steps and handrails and sleek stainless steel fittings seems to float.
The home was built in 2003 by general contractor Martin Pantik, who designed it in collaboration with homedesigner George Burns. When the house didn’t immediately sell, Pantik and his family lived there about a year before selling to Gonzalez.
“We were trying to fill a narrow lot and pack it with as much as possible, take advantage of those sweeping views,” Pantik recalled.
“I was always experimenting with different ways to approach residential construction. I sort of graduated to this austere, minimalist approach to residential construction ... The exterior meeting the interior.”
Gonzalez has enjoyed watching the barges and riverboats as well as the Big River Crossing pedestrian bridge. In his year there, Pantik loved watching the weather come in from Arkansas.
“There’s nothing better than to sit there staring at the river and then seeing a storm approaching from the distance,” he recalled. “You see it unveiling right in front of you.”
The home has a luxurious kitchen, a luxurious master bath/bedroom suite and luxurious finishes. The place also is a short walk to so many of Downtown’s restaurants, nightspots and entertainment venues.
But 489 Tennessee is truly about the views, or the “exterior” as Pantik calls it.
“Sort of like a big screen right in front of the eyes. Everything is unveiling in front of you,” he said. “There is no place in the house you can hide from it.”