As you might expect, a big part of running such an old, historic hotel is speaking to people about the multitude of fascinating things that have happened within these walls. "If walls could talk" is an expression that's found new meaning since I discovered this intriguing place.
Many know the basics. Hotel Maison de Ville includes buildings that are some of the few of French architecture that survived the Fires of New Orleans in 1788; that's true. New Orleans is old, but most of the city was rebuilt in the late 18th century after a series of fires - and our cottages and carriage houses hold the honor of being some of the few (and when I say few, I mean less than half a dozen) buildings that were not rebuilt. Maison de Ville is, at it's heart, a phoenix that has risen from the ashes multiple times (like our beautiful city itself).
And some know of our building's early inhabitant, Antoine Peychaud, who invented the now widely used Peychaud's Bitters and, later, the Sazerac, the world's first cocktail and now Louisiana's state cocktail.
And of course, everyone knows about Tennessee Williams - but not everyone knows that he stayed with us before he bought his first home in the French Quarter (which was right across the street - he didn't go far!). In fact, we named a Suite after him - the very rooms in which Williams wrote the manuscript that became A Streetcar Named Desire.
To come to the Maison de Ville - and by extension, New Orleans herself - has and will always be to take a walk through history, but it's not always in the most obvious sense. Sure, there are the greats, the stories told over and over again, but I prefer the smaller ways that Maison de Ville has so deeply entrenched itself in the psyche of America and the world. Every day, we find our hotel cropping up in places we didn't possibly know about - books set partly in our famous courtyard; old paintings of our fountain. The other day, I picked up a book about New Orleans' fine dining, and on the inside cover was a picture of our well-loved Bistro. I can't help but find it fascinating, that our name - and our charm - is woven so deeply into the history of New Orleans and of the United States that we are constantly finding mentions of it when we least expect it.
Today I ran across a book originally in French called American Hotel Stories. And how could I resist when the inside cover was a charming, hand-drawn map of the Unites States, with a wonderful little red building inked over where New Orleans would be, our name scrawled next to it? I flipped through, and lo and behold, there was a now very familiar image of our courtyard in the evening, with - of course - "Tennessee Williams" beneath.
I can't help but be tickled when I open these huge, heavy books to find gigantic glossy images of the place where I spend my days. I forget, sometimes, all the things this hotel has seen. It's high time I remembered.
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