Allison Owen

Major-General Allison Owen (December 29, 1869 – January 30, 1951) was an American architect, military officer and civic leader. He served as commander of the Washington Artillery during World War I and later led the 56th Field Artillery Brigade. A prominent New Orleans architect, Owen designed several notable civic and religious buildings.

Early life and education Allison Owen was born on December 29, 1869, in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Owen attended St. Simeon's and Jackson schools in New Orleans. He then went to Tulane University, where he studied, and later taught, art and architectural drawing during the period when Ellsworth Woodward directed art instruction at Tulane. Owen then studied architecture for 2 years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Military career Owen's military service spanned more than four decades. He first joined the Washington Artillery Battalion in 1890, during a period of reorganization following the American Civil War and Spanish–American War. By 1916, Major Owen commanded the battalion during its federal mobilization on the Mexican border at Donna, Texas.

After the war, Owen was promoted to brigadier general and placed in command of the newly created 56th Field Artillery Brigade of the Louisiana National Guard, which included units from Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. He held that command until his retirement in December 1933 upon reaching the statutory age limit.

Owen's military service earned several distinctions from the Louisiana National Guard and other states, as well as recognition, via the award of Chevalier in the Legion of Honour, from the French government for his work during and after the war.

Architectural career

After teaching drawing at Tulane University, Owen partnered with Collins C. Diboll in 1895 to form the firm Diboll & Owen, active in New Orleans in the early twentieth century. New Orleans Athletic Club St. Henry's Catholic Church, General Pershing Street Emlah Court Building, 3823 St. Charles Avenue (1912) United Fruit Company building, Union Street, whose façade is adorned with fruit American Sugar Refining offices Municipal Office building Canal Louisiana Bank building, Royal Street, now a hotel (1906) Metropolitan Bank building, Camp Street, corner with Poydras Street Westminster Congregational Church, Kansas City (1907) Saint Joseph's Roman Catholic Church, Mobile, Alabama (1907) Presbyterian Church, Yazoo City

New Orleans' Historic District Landmarks Commission designation report on Owen's own home, Owen–Lassus House, 1237 State Street in Audubon, noted that he had designed a house in a similar form to that represented by the portico front residences in Natchez, Mississippi, representing the 18th and early 19th-century American colonial style. Though Owen did not directly replicate a specific Natchez house, there are some similarities with the Greek-Revival Antebellum building Rosalie Mansion, in downtown Natchez. Owen spent $5,300 buying two plots in 1902-1903 (equivalent in 2025 to approximately $200,000) to construct the house, which has five bays and a large fluted Ionic order portico.

Civic involvement

Outside of his military and architectural careers, Owen was an active civic leader in New Orleans. He served as president of the city's Association of Commerce during the 1927 Mississippi River flood, when business and civic groups worked to reassure residents about the city's safety. He later testified before Congress on national flood-control legislation, emphasizing the importance of federal investment in levees and spillways.

Owen also led humanitarian efforts as chairman of the New Orleans chapter of the American Red Cross, coordinating relief and fundraising after the 1927 flood and remaining active during World War II. In 1943, Pope Pius XII invested Owen as a knight of the Order of St. Gregory the Great for his service to the Church and the Society of St. Vincent de Paul.

Personal life and death He married Blanche Pothier in 1895. They had four children, where a son (Allison Owen Jr.) and daughter (Cecile Owen) survived their father's death. He died in the early hours of January 30, 1951 at Hôtel-Dieu hospital (now known as University Hospital, New Orleans), at the age of 81 years, having suffered a stroke.

Many of Owen's architectural works stand to this day. However, much of his civic vision for a greener and more beautiful city was later undone. As chairman of the Parkway and Park Commission, he had overseen the planting of tens of thousands of trees and the creation of New Orleans’ azalea trail and palm-lined boulevards. But these landscapes were permanently scarred by the construction of the Pontchartrain Expressway (Interstate 10) in the 1960s after his death, which cut through South Claiborne Avenue, destroyed over 200 oak trees, and displaced hundreds of homes and businesses that had been central to the avenue's character.

Owen's portrait by William Woodward was included in the Louisiana State Museum’s For Home and Country exhibit from 2017 to 2018.

The papers of Allison Owen are held by the Tulane University in their Special Collections Repository, donated by his daughter Cecile Owen. The New Orleans City Archives & Special Collections holds other records, notably some of his architectural designs as well as back issues of Architectural Art and Its Allies. Louisiana State University, in Baton Rouge, holds his father's records and some of Allison Owen's military archives in the Hill Memorial Library Special Collections.