The Ledners’ entire house, in fact, appears to be one of these post-Katrina miracles. Designed and built by Mr. Ledner in the mid-1950s, the house, which has the jaunty silhouette of a World’s Fair pavilion, looks as fragile as a piece of cut crystal. It was flooded for weeks, and the elegant built-in furniture was left warped and moldy, the fine-grained Arkansas pine paneling was stained and a lifetime’s worth of possessions were ruined. Mr. Ledner considered tearing much of it down. But there it stands, denuded of most of its landscaping but largely rebuilt, the comfortable, unconventional homestead the Ledners have known for 50 years.

The house is one of 40 or so modern but eccentric New Orleans residences that Mr. Ledner has designed over six decades, and that have made him something of a local institution. (The most famous, built in 1962 for a pair of ardent smokers, has a procession of 1,200 gold glass ashtrays running just below its roofline; it now belongs to the mayor of New Orleans, C. Ray Nagin.)