The Truth and Beauty of Boyd Cruise, Godfather of HNOC

In addition to being the unofficial godfather of HNOC, Cruise was equal parts artist and researcher. Deeply romantic about the old French Quarter, he painted the Vieux Carré with well-researched attention to detail and an aesthete’s eye for composition and color. Always blending realism with beauty, he approached both his art and his work at HNOC with humility and rigor.

“I believe anybody can do anything he wants to do,” he told Times-Picayune reporter John Pope in a 1978 profile. “All he has to do is make up his mind.”

Alvyk Boyd Cruise was born in 1909 in rural Mississippi, near McComb. His family moved to Louisiana when he was a young child, and he completed his schooling in Lake Charles. His first professional artistic exploits came in high school thanks to Rosa Hart, director of the Lake Charles Little Theater, who recognized Cruise’s budding talent and put him to work designing and painting stage sets. Upon graduation, Cruise received a four-year scholarship to the New Orleans School of Art, studying under Charles Bien and Weeks Hall, followed by a scholarship to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art in Philadelphia. Cruise won several awards for his work and was able to travel to Europe twice to expand his artistic experience.

The young artist returned to New Orleans in 1935 and found work with the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), a project of the Works Progress Administration aimed at documenting the nation’s architecture. He worked under architect Richard Koch, painting watercolors to complement the architectural photographs taken by Koch and his partner, Sam Wilson Jr. The early work of the HABS architects and artists was invaluable to the growing preservation movement in the French Quarter. It also set the blueprint for Cruise’s career straddling history and art.

“Boyd, with Koch’s tutelage, discovered the verities of architecture,” Collier wrote. “Boyd’s experience with beauty and truth began to take on new dimensions.”

During his time on the HABS project, Cruise and his life partner, Harold Schilke, purchased a historic Creole cottage at 915–917 St. Ann Street and began a long, loving restoration process. Both Cruise and Schilke delighted in “adding a touch of magic here and there,” as Cruise told Pope, filling the four-room cottage and service buildings with art and antiques. Cruise had his own art studio in one of the dependencies.

When the Second World War put a halt to the HABS project, Cruise enlisted as an artist in the Navy working in the camouflage division; he also designed and painted dioramas to promote war bond drives. After the war effort ended, Cruise returned to his work documenting the historic structures of New Orleans. This time, instead of painting detailed depictions of their current facades, Cruise looked to historic research. He studied old lot maps at the New Orleans Notarial Archives to depict the structures as they might have looked in the past, complete with period passers-by. He also researched historic costumes and furnishings to depict imagined snippets of life in old New Orleans. Though grounded in research, his tableaux of the past were colored by the segregated society of the 1950s and romanticized an antebellum history that not everyone associated with splendor.

In addition to his architectural works, Cruise was known for his still life, flora, and trompe l’oeil paintings still rooted in his passion for Louisiana history. For example, in his watercolor Perique, he features the plant against a backdrop of a torn 19th-century advertisement for the popular Louisiana tobacco. His Pitcher Plants shows the lovely orchids in a porcelain mug placed in front of framed historic prints. Cruise taught at the Arts and Crafts Club, Newcomb College, and the John McCrady Art School and exhibited at several places around town, including the Delgado Museum of Art (now NOMA), Gus Mayer department store, and at the art gallery run by Albert Lieutaud, his art dealer.

Through his connections with Koch and Lieutaud, Cruise’s work soon came to the attention of Louisiana art and history collectors Kemper and Leila Williams. It was quite convenient that Lieutaud rented his gallery space at 531 Royal Street from the Williamses, whose new French Quarter residence was on an adjoining lot. The Williamses began collecting Cruise’s work and soon hired him for his eye for detail and appreciation of Louisiana history. Cruise worked closely with the Williamses as the cataloger, curator, and caretaker of their growing collection, creating the first object records at HNOC. With Leila, who was especially fond of Cruise’s trompe l’oeil works, Cruise helped furnish art for the Williams Residence. Under Kemper’s direction, Cruise created an index of the Louisiana Historical Quarterly (which he also illustrated, via his Louisiana Alphabet series), directed the Vieux Carré Survey, which remains one of the most frequently referenced research tools at HNOC, and assembled an incredible collection of Louisiana history.

In his professional life, Cruise was seen as “aloof, unapproachable, and somewhat shy,” as Pope wrote—a characterization that Cruise affirmed, saying that he preferred to have a small group of friends “because I believe you can’t give a lot to a lot of people.” This focus of energies was consistent with his work ethic and general outlook on life. “I was always taught that if you’re going to make a success out of your life, you’ve got to attend to your business and not do something else when you’re supposed to be doing a job.” Privately, he and Schilke shared a lifetime together, entertaining friends at their beloved St. Ann Street Creole cottage. (Cruise was a talented home cook, according to one letter from a friend reminiscing about a delicious meal.)

Leila Moore Williams passed away in 1966, and her will established the Historic New Orleans Collection, operated by the Kemper and Leila Williams Fund (later Foundation). Cruise became the first director of the Collection, working alongside Kemper to open the Williamses’ historic Royal Street complex to the public as a research center and museum. Cruise oversaw the transition of the private collection to a public resource and established the beginnings of the highly knowledgeable staff to continue the Collection’s stewardship, expansion, and interpretation. In 1974, three years after Kemper’s death, he set up the Williams Residence as a historic house museum, following the general’s will to preserve the home as an example of French Quarter living. Cruise worked from Kemper’s old desk in the study and regularly spritzed Chanel No. 5 through the house to make it feel as if Leila had just been there.

Disgusted by the art-world dominance of abstract expressionism, Cruise largely gave up painting after 1959. “I couldn’t compete with that, and I refused to compete with that,” he said. He still continued to work as an artist and designer throughout his life. He designed invitations and royal scrolls for the Mystic Krewe of Comus, programs and pamphlets for HNOC as well as the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, and even the menu for Gin’s Mee Hong Restaurant on Conti Street.

Cruise, who admitted that he was “not very happy” with the managerial aspects of the executive director position, retired from HNOC in 1974, taking the title of director emeritus. Cruise focused on a project that had initially begun during his work with Leila, researching Louisiana artists of note and writing short biographies. HNOC published the resulting book, the Encyclopeadia of New Orleans Artists, in 1987. Schilke had passed away in 1978, and Cruise died a decade later, leaving their house and collection of art, antiques, and research to the Historic New Orleans Collection.