An upcoming film?and the timeless eclecticism of Ledner?s work?is fueling renewed interest One of architect Albert C. Ledner?s best known projects started out with a joke.
It was the spring of 1961, and Ledner, only 37 but with more than 20 New Orleans homes to his credit, was visiting his clients, Pat and Adrian Sunkel. They were discussing ideas for a new four-bedroom home on Park Island, a knuckle of land on Bayou St. John just then being subdivided. The couple were avid smokers, lighting up throughout the design sessions and at one point, Ledner became captivated by the amber glass ashtrays littered throughout the Sunkel home.
?I just threw it out there, sort of kidding,? Ledner, an acolyte of Frank Lloyd Wright, recently recalled. ?But they were beautiful, very warm, with sort of a circle inside of a square. It was very architectural. So I said, ?These are very interesting, maybe we can work them into the design, as a decorative element.? And they immediately said, ?That?s a great idea, let?s do it.?
Joshua Brasted
The Sunkel home in New Orleans, built by architect Albert Ledner in the early 1960s, was later owned by the city?s former mayor Ray Nagin.

Within a few months, Ledner and the Sunkels were unpacking boxes of ashtrays, 1,200 in all. Hundreds would form a dentil motif just above the eaves of the otherwise white and black-brick single-story home. Others decorated light fixtures, anywhere the hazy light might give them a rosin gl...