When a pair of doctors who have lived in Covington for almost two decades start looking down the road to retirement, you might expect they would set their sights on downsizing to a small cottage on the north shore â somewhere peaceful, a place surrounded by nature.
But Lauren and David Toups instead opted to return to New Orleans and adopt an 1892-era, down-on-its-luck, two-story historic house smack dab in the middle of bustling and decidedly unbucolic Bywater.
âLauren and I love Covington and St. Tammany, where we have lived for 17 years. But looking to the future, we decided we really wanted to retire to New Orleans and to a neighborhood that would have plenty of restaurants and shops within walking distance,â said David Toups, an emergency room physician at the St. Tammany Parish hospital. âWhen we saw the house on Clouet Street in Bywater, we knew we had found the place.â