USA: ROOM SERVICE IN THE BIG EASY
Heritage, haunted and art-focused hotels help guests get in the mood for exploring New Orleans.
Heritage, haunted and art-focused hotels help guests get in the mood for exploring New Orleans.
In a city brimming with jazz tunes, Southern charm, Cajun history, Creole heritage and a whole lot of artistic and quirky people, instead of just visiting by day and hanging out at night, why not immerse yourself with lodgings that reflect the culture and unique qualities of America’s most unconventional city? Here are some places to stay in New Orleans that reflect the heritage, art, music, architecture and unique side of Louisiana’s Crescent City.
ART SMART AND ALL THAT JAZZ
Noted American playwright Tennessee Williams stayed at the Pontchartrain in the Garden District in 1947 when a nearby streetcar line went to Desire St. – and so he wrote
A Streetcar Named Desire. The 106-guestroom hotel reopened in June 2016, after extensive renovations that kept its original 1927 charm.
Built in 1854 in what’s now the Warehouse Art District, the Old No. 77 Hotel & Chandlery partners with the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts to infuse the former coffee warehouse with writings and visual art by new artists. Students create and perform in events at the 77, and reproductions of students’ art are displayed in the 160 guestrooms.
French Impressionist painter Edgar Degas, who’s best known for his paintings of ballet students rehearsing, lived in New Orleans for four-and-a-half months in 1872-1873. During his stay at his Creole mother’s family home, he created 18 paintings. Now the Greek Revival home in the Esplanade Ridge neighbourhood is both a museum and a nine-guestroom bed-and-breakfast, the Edgar Degas House. Guests can sign up for art classes, and Degas’ great-grandnieces conduct tours.
The Windsor Court Hotel near the French Quarter combines English traditions – including High Tea – with French style and live New Orleans jazz. The 316-guestroom hotel’s museumquality collection of British paintings and tapestries from the 17th through the 20th century focus on royalty and Windsor Castle.
In addition to retro-modern style, music is the focal point of the trendy Ace Hotel New Orleans, which opened in 2016 in the art-focused Warehouse District. Many guestrooms have Music Hall turntables, 1950s-style Tivoli radios and acoustic Martin guitars. The adjacent Three Keys brings in both guests and locals for music performances, three-to-five nights per week.
HISTORY AND HERITAGE
The Cornstalk Hotel, a French Quarter home built in 1816, gained its name and fame more than 40 years later when the owner’s wife was homesick for Iowa. To calm her longing, her husband built an intricate decorative, wrought-iron fence depicting corn stalks around their home. The Victorian hotel with stained-glass windows, antique furniture, cherubs, rosette medallions, crystal chandeliers, and gold-leaf ceilings in 14 guestrooms is now on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. In the mid-19th century, author Harriet Beecher Stowe supposedly stayed here. She is said to have seen slave markets nearby and been inspired to write her anti-slavery novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
Built in 1883 as an Italianate mansion with columns aplenty both inside and out, the Columns Hotel is listed in the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. The architect designed the home for America’s largest manufacturer of cigars at the turn of the 20th century. The current owners restored the 20-guestroom Columns to its original-era grandeur by refurbishing and filling it with antiques, period-style paintings, murals, tapestries, stained glass, crystal chandeliers, grand gilt mirrors and ornately patterned wallpaper. The bar and lounge with the original oak, mahogany and cherry Victorian back bar was formerly the dining room, with a floor button to notify servants when the next course should be served.
Louisiana architect Henry Howard designed 300 buildings in New Orleans, and in 1867 he constructed what’s now known as the Henry Howard Hotel for the daughters of a steamboat owner. One side of the townhouse mansion was a mirror image of the other so it would be fair to the two daughters. The column-rich Greek Revival inn also has Italianate arches and intricate cast-iron railings. In the 1800s one of the 18 guestrooms was a kitchen, and its still-visible oversize brick fireplace was used for cooking and heating.
The Park View Historic Hotel in Uptown was built in 1884 before the World International Cotton exposition and is listed on the National Register of Historic Landmarks. It displays historical Mardi Gras souvenirs and antique clocks, some nearly three centuries old. The 22-guestroom Park View is owned and operated by a 10th-generation New Orleanian.
Built in 1830 in the French Quarter, the 30-guestroom Soniat House was originally three townhouses built in closed-in
Creole style. However, the house also shows new influences from a more American open-to-the-world design that entered New Orleans after the 1803 Louisiana Purchase from France. When fancy wrought iron became trendy in the 1860s, the owners added masses of ornate leaves and grapes.
The over-the-top 1884 Victorian-Gothic Melrose Mansion with brilliant white columns, arched window frames, leadedglass windows and eye-catching bric-a-brac is a bed-andbreakfast in the Faubourg Marigny neighbourhood. Renovated in 2011, the 14-guestroom mansion still keeps its Creole styling.
The 504-guestroom Roosevelt Hotel, built in 1880 in the Central Business District, has grand hallways, vaulted ceilings, massive crystal chandeliers and ornate floors. Over the years, many a celebrity has dined, stayed or played at the Roosevelt, including Louie Armstrong, Ray Charles, Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, and U.S. presidents Bill Clinton and Dwight Eisenhower. Huey Long, a flamboyant populist governor of Louisiana in the early 1900s, reportedly had the state build the 80-mile-long Airline Highway from the capital, Baton Rouge, to NOLA so he could more quickly drive to his suite at the Roosevelt – and get his favourite cocktail, a Ramos Gin Fizz.
QUIRKY AND UNIQUE
Instead of carved wooden horses, the slowly rotating Carousel Bar in Hotel Monteleone has 25 ornate chairs. Overhead, circus-style rounding boards, mirrors, carved Mardi-Gras faces and white light bulbs make it a real adult merry-go-round. The historic 19th-century French-Quarter hotel’s 570 guestrooms include five literary suites named for authors who stayed at or wrote about the hotel: Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, William Faulkner, Eudora Welty and Ernest Hemingway.
Walls of the five-guestroom Victorian Auld Sweet Olive bed and breakfast, a bright-yellow Creole cottage built in the 1850s in the funky-chic Faubourg Marigny district, are painted with palm- and banana-tree-themed murals by a scenic designer who works on scenery on the Sherlock Holmes television series, Elementary.
The homey five-guestroom Okra Inn Bed & Breakfast, built in the 1920s, also hosts art, improvisation, cooking and other events in the Mid-City neighbourhood. The inn’s owner, a seventh-generation New Orleanian, gives a portion of earnings to non-profits focusing on coastal erosion, affordable housing and the Crescent City’s cultural preservation.
A restored Creole townhouse built in 1845, houses the 35-guestroom Catahoula Hotel, which opened in 2016 in the Central Business District and was named for a Louisiana breed of dog. The exposed-brick, plaster walls and window frames in the rooms are original with contemporary furnishings made of Louisiana cypress. However, the Pisco Bar goes Peruvianquirky by specialising in Pisco cocktails.
Aimed at millennials, the downtown Moxy Hotel opened in 2016 with 108 “tech-enabled” rooms with “furiously fast and free” WiFi. It promotes new artists, and its brightly coloured kilim carpets, quirky patterned throw pillows and abundant artwork in the “living room” are a strong contrast to historic NOLA hotels.
VOODOO AND HAUNTINGS
The 1833 Banks Arcade building in the Central Business District was a meeting place for merchants in the coffee and sugar trades. Legend says a merchant died in a fire there around 1850 so the most exalted voodoo priestess opened a path for him to return to the Caribbean. When the building became a hospital during the American Civil War (1861-1865), dying soldiers saw visions of heavenly islands so the legend says that the path for the merchant remained open to others. Now guests in the 84-guestroom St. James Hotel sense the Caribbean through the palms, ferns and stylish West Indies décor.
The French Market Inn in the French Quarter near the Mississippi River began as a bakery in 1722, when this riverside part of town was on the rough side. Now the 120-guestroom inn is known for its garden, stone-paved patio, exposed antique-brick walls and period paintings. However, it’s mostly renowned for its invisible guests: Beginning in 1832, guests reported hearing loud clangs and seeing “misty shapes.”
Le Pavillon, a stylishly modern 212-guestroom hotel with antiques and Czechoslovakian crystal chandeliers, was built downtown in 1907 and is said to have a few semi-visible residents: An apparition named Anna is “often” seen in the lobby. Hotel staff report that guests have “frequently” said that in the middle of the night their showers have turned on, their sheets have been pulled off or they’ve seen a “supernatural” glow at the foot of their beds. Four of the suites have historical themes – Louisiana plantation, the Far East, 18th century European castle, and Roaring Twenties Art Deco – but there’s no word if the ghosts dress accordingly. You will have to find out for yourself! •