The House of the Falling Rain

I'm in the French quarter of New Orleans! In my imagination.
In reality, it's Haverfordwest on a wet day. One of the many civic scandals of this down-at-heel town is the deplorable state of this architectural gem, a Georgian building in Barn Street that looks just like one of the balconied houses for which Lousiana's historic port was famous (before it became more famous for Hurricane Katrina.)
As long as I have known it this place has been empty and dilapidated, the wisteria so conjoined with the wrought-iron work as to support it as much as the scaffolding that itself is rusting with age. Look through the letterbox and you see that the interior has been ripped apart and left to deteriorate. The house, built in 1839, is a listed building which means it has to be preserved and presumably no one has seen fit to invest the vast sum that would doubtless require. To make matters worse, it stands on a street that is now part of the town's busy one-way system: there is a lot of noise and no parking.

With its battlemented parapet and mansard roof the house is period piece, and the verandah is a tribute to the town's erstwhile iron foundry but who would want to sit there now and watch the cars whizzing past? It doesn't look as if the sun is going to rise on Spring Gardens (as it is called) ever again.

At least we can listen to The Animals sing about the other one. (Eric Burdon, bless him, turned 70 this year and he's still singing.)