The Lower Garden District holds some of the city’s most architecturally serious 19th-century mansions, and three of them now operate as boutique places to stay. Each one took years of careful restoration to get here.
1. Henry Howard Hotel
Architect Henry Howard designed this double gallery mansion in 1867, a Greek Revival build with Italianate detailing and walk-through windows framed by Corinthian columns. The property has been reimagined into an 18-room boutique hotel, one block off St. Charles Avenue, with a black wrought iron gate and front porch that regulars specifically cite as the place where the stay actually happens.
Several rooms carry balconies with 12-foot floor-to-ceiling windows, and three individual guest rooms share a common hallway that can be booked together for a private wing. The hotel’s bar program has built its own reputation independent of the rooms above it, and press coverage from The New York Times, Vogue, and Condé Nast Traveler has followed.
Henry Howard Hotel is at 2041 Prytania Street. Call (504) 313-1577 or book at henryhowardhotel.com.
2. Hotel Saint Vincent
The building at 1507 Magazine Street opened in 1861 as Saint Vincent’s Infant Asylum, and Austin-based hospitality developers Larry McGuire, Tom Moorman, and Liz Lambert spent roughly $22.5 million transforming the complex into a 75-room boutique hotel that opened in 2021. The restoration kept original 19th-century plasterwork and detailing intact while layering in midcentury Italian design elements throughout the public spaces.
The brick courtyard at the center of the property, framed by three connected hotel buildings, holds a guest-only Saltillo-lined pool and pool bar that multiple reviewers describe as the spiritual center of the whole stay. San Lorenzo, the hotel’s coastal Italian restaurant, runs Gulf seafood through a dining room finished with thick wainscoting carrying rope and medallion detailing that echoes the building’s original plasterwork.
Hotel Saint Vincent is at 1507 Magazine Street. Call (504) 350-2450 or book at saintvincentnola.com.
3. Margaret Place
Architect Trenton Gauthier spent six years restoring this mansion to National Park Service standards, naming the property after the adjacent Margaret Place Park, which holds the second-oldest American statue of a woman. The building operates primarily as an event venue, with five individually decorated hotel rooms on-site for guests who want to stay inside the same walls.
The Connector Room takes its design cues from a historic Portoro marble mantle original to the building, while the third-floor Lookout Room, the smallest in the house, draws cross ventilation and neighborhood views that repeat guests consistently name as their favorite. A semi-tropical courtyard ties the indoor and outdoor spaces together, and the property sits half a block off St. Charles Avenue, close enough to the parade route to make second lines a regular occurrence on-site.
Margaret Place is at 1133 Margaret Place. Call (504) 264-6045 or book at margaretplacehotel.com.
