City: New Orleans, LA

Category: Tours & Attractions

Telephone: (504) 568-6968

Address: 523 St. Ann St.

Description: It was in 1850 that the Baroness Micaela Almonaster de Pontalba first opened the doors of the two magnificent row houses, patterned after stately French architecture of the period, that she had designed and built. They flank Jackson Square on St. Ann and St. Peters Streets. She inherited the land from her father, Don Andres Almonaster y Roxas, a wealthy Spaniard who rebuilt the Cabildo, Presbytere, and St. Louis Cathedral after the fire of 1788 destroyed those buildings along with most of the old city. The baroness hired noted local architect James Gallier Sr. to design the row houses (though she dismissed him shortly before construction began and finished it herself), Henry Howard to work on the architectural drawings, and Samuel Stewart as the builder. When the Pontalba buildings, constructed to stop the increasing deterioration of the old part of the city that had begun in the 1840s, were completed, each contained 16 separate apartments on the upper floors and self-contained shops on the ground floors. The cartouches that decorate the cast-iron railings were designed by her and signify the Almonaster and Pontalba families. The matching blocklong structures added style and dimension to the Place d’Armes (later renamed Jackson Square at the urging of the baroness to commemorate General Andrew Jackson, hero of the Battle of New Orleans). After the Civil War the Pontalba buildings fell into disrepair and, by the turn of the century, had become tenements. New Orleans philanthropist William Ratcliffe Irby bought the Lower Pontalba building from the Pontalba heirs in 1921 for $68,000 and willed it to the Louisiana State Museum in 1927. The City of New Orleans ultimately acquired the Upper Pontalba building on the opposite side of Jackson Square. Extensive restoration of the buildings took place under the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s while renovation of the interiors occurred in 1955. The museum has re-created what one of these residences might have looked like during the antebellum era and depicts family life during the most prosperous period in the city’s history.