Le Pavillon

The hotel provides the public with little information about its history. Our team researches the hotel's past, from the very beginning, verifying its exact opening date and providing an overview of its history up to the present day.?If you have any useful information and would like to share it, please send it to archives@famoushotels.org.?Thank you This is what we know so far (attention: unverified history!): Originally the site of one of the area´s first great plantation homes. Opened as New Hotel Denechaud, it received instant international acclaim as one of America´s most notable new hotels. Noteworthy, among the hotel's impressive collection of historic antiques, are a distinctive portrait of a lady of the French Court that hangs in the Crystal Room. Two stipulations to the hotel's purchase of the painting were that it would never leave New Orleans and that it be the only painting of a woman in the room where it was to be hung. The hotel also boasts the largest gas lantern in the United States, which hangs burning at the front porch. Proudly sitting in our Castle Suite, is a magnificent handcarved marble bathtub, which was a gift from Napoleon to a wealthy Louisiana plantation owner. A similar tub that had belonged to Napoleon is housed in the Louvre. In addition, one will note the two twenty-odd foot tall Italian statues of Peace and Prosperity, who beckon from their front porch niches to the guests of Le Pavillon. Poydras Street: the central corridor of the New Orleans business district, minutes away from the Superdome, the Convention Center, and the historic French Quarter. The hub of commerce in the Crescent City. Home to a gleaming procession of modern sky-sculptures- and the majestic setting for one of the grandest hotels in New Orleans, Le Pavillon. Such urban bustle was not always the scene along this parcel of land, once part of the huge plantation belonging to Mr. Jean Gravier, one of the leading citizens of early New Orleans. The property had originally belonged to the Jesuits, who purchased it directly from the Sieur de Bienville, the founder of New Orleans; it fell into Mr. Gravier's hands after the Jesuits were expelled from the region. The plantation produced primarily sugar cane and indigo; but as Gravier's fortune declined, so did the condition of the land. By the turn of the 19th century, the area was a forbidding outward fringe of the city, described by a writer of the time as a place of "foul deeds and midnight murders…the dismal willows could be heard uttering plaintive sounds with every gust of wind." Cypress thickets and cemeteries; treacherous bogs inhabited by mosquitoes, bats, hoot owls and runaway slaves; the land was a place where "no ordinary courage was required to venture alone." The night was filled with sounds of wild men and beasts, the air thick with intrigue and desperate plots. Poydras Street was at this time a canal; a murky, stagnant ditch leading into a basin that formed a weed choked pond popular as a hunting spot for geese and snipe. The street leading to the canal which runs the length of the current hotel property, has the born names of the god Bacchus; the Spanish brigadier general and territorial governor Manuel de Salcedo; and the Baronne de Carondelet, wife of Baron Carondelet, who supposedly planted a rose garden near the spot where the street intersected the canal. The garden failed, but her name remains attached to the street this day. The area as a whole was known at the time as Faubourg Ste. Marie. In the early 1830's, the land was reclaimed and filled in by the oldest railroad in the city, the New Orleans and Carrollton, which extended Baronne St. across the Basin Gravier. Some of the newly restored land was ceded to the city, by the area on which the Hotel now stands remained part of the railroad holdings; hence the name of the short street running behind the Hotel, Carroll St. the railroad built its main depot on the site; there. Their horse cars connected with the steam trains from Tivoli Circle (now Lee Circle) and ran six miles upriver to the thriving village of Carrolton. After the railroad depot fell into disuse, the building was remodeled to accommodate circuses, traveling shows and other spectacles. The National Theatre, frequently called the German Theatre, the scene of performances ranging from the sublime to the absurd, replaced the old edifice in 1867. In the 1870's, the property became embroiled in a series of legal wrangling that continued through the rest of the century and went all the way to the United States Supreme Court; the city attempted a variety of maneuvers to claim the land, but ultimately lost the battle. Mr. Philip Werlein, founder of the famous music store, owned the property at this time; the German Theatre became known as Werlein hall. The building was destroyed by a suspicious origin in1889. In 1889, after the final disposition of the legal proceedings, La Baronne Realty Company, who erected a spectacular palace called the New Hotel Denechaud acquired the property. The old Hotel Denechaud had stood on the corner of Carondelet and Period Streets, and had been considered perhaps the finest hotel in the South; the new hotel was intended to carry its great tradition of continental splendor even further. The eminent New Orleans architects Toledano and Woggan, assisted Rathbone E. DeBuys, designed the new structure; construction was by the New York firm of Milliken Brothers. Completed in 1907, the Hotel achieved new heights of elegance and luxury; among its more unusual features were the first hydraulic elevators ever to be installed in New Orleans, and the first basement ever built in the city. Electric lighting was also among the array of then-modern features. The new Hotel Denechaud received instant international acclaim as a monument to refined taste and luxurious accommodation; in the hey day of the Grand Hotels, the Denechaud was one of the Grandest. A seemingly endless parade of famous people passed through its doors, and events of great glamour and magnitude transpired under its roof. Through wars, prohibition, the Great Depression, and the advent of the horseless carriage, the Hotel sustained and enhanced its reputation as one of the finest in the world. ****** In 1970, ownership of the hotel passed into new hands, and a major restoration project was undertaken. While maintaining an extraordinary sensitivity to the beauty of the original architecture and interior design, a bevy of modern luxury features were added, wedding the glory of the past to the refinements of the present. Crystal chandeliers from Czechoslovakia, marble floors, from several locations around the continent, marble railings from the lobby of the Grand Hotel in Paris, Spectacular Italian columns to grace the exterior, and fine art and antiques from the world over have found a home in New Orleans. Here high-tech communications capabilities, a variety of convenient guest services, and all the amenities a modern hotel should provide join them. The spacious, exquisitely furnished rooms and suites welcome each visitor to a comfortable, deluxe home away from home. Crowning it all is the rooftop pool and patio, the perfect place for a refreshing swim with a spectacular view of the Crescent City and the vast, sweeping Mississippi River. To complete the renaissance of this living legend, the hotel was renamed Le Pavillon. ****** On June 24, 1991 Le Pavillon was placed on the National Register of Historic Place by the U.S. Department of the Interior. In a steel and glass world of lightning-paced uniformity, the age of the grand Hotels almost seems like ancient history. Only a privileged few of today's travelers are fortunate enough to find themselves surrounded by the timeless luxury and magnificent service that are the reminders of a more genteel time of relaxing days and sophisticated, sparkling nights. Such a place, such a time, lives on today in the historic magnificent Le Pavillon Hotel.