With a deep front and side galleries overlooking a leafy street and the Mandeville lakefront, the home of Katie Jensen and Tommy Parks is the embodiment of genteel Southern charm by day, moonlight and magnolias by night.
On New Year’s Eve 2025, the couple married at the raised, five-bay plantation-style home that Jensen bought as a work-in-progress in 2012. Their combined seven children, who range in age from 4 to 16, served as attendants.
The home that originally stood on the site was built around 1920 as an Anglo-Creole center-hall cottage. It was gutted and rendered to sticks by Hurricane Katrina. Historical contractor Mike Ripple bought the property and set about rebuilding it with strength and height to withstand any storm.
The home will be one of five featured on the 15th annual Old Mandeville Historic Association’s Mother’s Day Home Tour on Sunday afternoon.
Ripple used any original materials he could salvage from the house, augmented by his personal collection of reclaimed architectural elements, cypress and heart pine lumber, antique heart pine flooring, and antique cypress and pine doors and windows. He milled the lumber and poured the concrete for the house’s 14-foot support pillars on-site.
Before he could finish the house, Ripple decided to sell it to Jensen, who then hired him to see the project through to completion.
The home is raised 14 feet atop a concrete pad, with a centrally located brick fireplace salvaged from the original structure. The front of the pad is used for parking, and the rear is an informal outdoor living and dining space with access to a spacious, verdant backyard.
The main floor of the home is accessed via one of two staircases at the front and rear corners of the structure. There is also an elevator.
An elegant zoo
Jensen, a native of the New Orleans area, and Parks, a native of Mandeville, met as neighbors. Parks grew up around the corner from the home they now share and used to play in the original home on the property as a child. He is a riverboat pilot, and Jensen is the co-founder and CEO of Triton Stone, a New Orleans-based natural stone importer with locations in 15 states.
As such, she travels the world in search of exotic granite, marble and other stones for architectural projects. She drew on these resources to outfit the house with Calcutta Gold marble in the kitchen and bar area, and Calcutta Monet marble in the primary bathroom on the first floor.
She originally worked with Ellen Bajon and Lauren Marlborough of EMB Interiors. After Marlborough left to establish Livio Designs, Jensen went along for the ride to maintain the elegant appearance Marlborough had created using materials that would withstand the demands of a family that has since grown to nine.
The 6,000-square-foot home has mostly pale, cool white walls that offset the deep, rich heart pine floors and a collection of antiques spanning the ages mixed with contemporary pieces. An abundance of family photographs and abstract paintings adorn the walls and surfaces.
Ripple built a graceful, curved staircase that sweeps up to the children’s living quarters from a broad central hall that divides the kitchen and dining area from the spacious primary suite.
A voluminous family room is dominated by a sectional sofa covered in taupe and white textured fabric with a Greek key design. A pair of matched raised panel doors glide open on tracks to reveal Jensen’s home office, which has wainscoted walls of whitewashed pecky cypress.
There is a slide anchored atop a rear staircase that the children use to travel between the second and first floors. There is splattered paint atop the table in the more casual of the home’s two dining areas.
On many an evening, the family will troop, en masse, up the stairs from the attic to the roof to access the widow’s walk to take in the heart-stopping sunsets to be enjoyed overlooking nearby Lake Pontchartrain.
“It looks pretty good right now, but it’s often a disaster,” said Jensen. “It’s a zoo. It’s amazing, but it’s a zoo.”
“We are a big family. We are blessed with a home and a neighborhood we love, and we live in them to the fullest.”
Mandeville Historic Association Mother’s Day Home Tour
The 15th annual Old Mandeville Historic Association Mother’s Day Home Tour: Timeless And Today is from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. May 10. Sponsors are Niche Modern Home and Wesley’s Comfort Zone.
In addition to the historic Jean Baptiste Lang House at 605 Carroll St., five private Old Mandeville homes will open their doors to the public. Restrooms will be available at the Lang House and Newell Chapel.
The tour is the association’s primary fundraiser and is an eagerly anticipated annual Mother’s Day outing in Old Mandeville. Tour proceeds are a critical source of support for the 1850 Jean Baptiste Lang House, which operates as a historic house museum offering tours, an event space, research materials and a gift shop.
Proceeds allow the association to preserve and promote the history and cultural heritage of Old Mandeville through publications, Old Mandeville Historic Site Plaque Locations, the Old Mandeville Street Strolls walking tour guides, a summertime children’s history camp, lectures on topics of interest and periodic field trips to explore the rich cultural heritage of Louisiana and the Gulf South.
Tickets are $25 for adults and $15 for students and may be purchased online at oldmandevillehistoricassociation.org or in person at the Lang House during business hours (10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Thursday-Friday and 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday) via cash or check only.
Day of Tour tickets will be $30 for adults and $15 for students. All ticket holders must visit the Lang House in person to pick up their wristbands and tour map.
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