Bywater Bed and Breakfast, New Orleans, LA,
Marti Burt & Betty-Carol Sellen, Owners
Countless visitors to New Orleans go to experience its festive, fiery culture in museums, galleries and street life all across the city. At the Bywater Bed and Breakfast, innkeepers Marti Burt and Betty-Carol Sellen bring the art to you.
Sellen, a retired librarian, is an expert in outsider and folk art, and has authored several reference books on self-taught artists. (Burt, who worked on programs for vulnerable populations in the U.S., is also retired.) It’s no surprise, then, that the Bywater features a huge library of New Orleans-set literature for guests to browse, as well as a handpicked collection of “self-taught art by the Southern hand,” including pieces by Louisiana-based artists Ivy Billiot, Roy Ferdinand, Lorraine Gendron and many more. Themes of Mardi Gras and the Garden of Eden appear in the works adorning the public and private rooms.
“[We wanted] a comfortable home environment from which to explore New Orleans,” Burt says, noting that Sellen has always wanted to run a bed and breakfast. With porches bedecked in Boston ferns, a relaxing patio, gardens and a lily pond, the Bywater is a great way to experience how to live like a Nawlins native.
The downtown Bywater neighborhood where the inn is located sits about a mile from the Esplanade side of the French Quarter—close enough for its 24/7 nightlife and culinary scene, but removed enough for some peace and quiet when needed. The couple said the up-and-coming, multicultural nabe is popular with LGBT residents and boasts a number of quirky restaurants, like Frady’s One Stop, the locals’ go-to deli for po’ boys and chitchat.
Burt and Sellen met in New York in 1989, married in 2008 in California, and, with dreams of living in NOLA, opened the bed and breakfast in 1995. “[New Orleans] is a place where you can have a lot of fun,” Burt says. “Music everywhere, huge range of interesting food choices, major street scenes, art—what’s not to like?”
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