1112 Chartres Street, New Orleans, LA 70116
Website, social handles here.
- The Old Ursuline Convent Museum has housed a convent, a school, an archive of Catholic records, a residence for church leaders, a meeting place for the Louisiana Legislature, and now a museum dedicated to the history of the Ursuline Nuns and the role the Catholic church played in the city’s history.
- With St. Louis Cathedral part of the Catholic Cultural Heritage Center, it’s a destination for anyone interested in the city’s colonial, spiritual, and social legacies.
The history
The oldest building in the Mississippi River Valley and the only US structure that survives from the French colonial period, the Old Ursuline Convent Museum has survived catastrophic French Quarter fires, hurricanes, multiple flag changes, an outrageous real estate deal engineered by Thomas Jefferson, and an “attack of the English” dramatically repelled at the Battle of New Orleans. Though probably not an infestation of vampires.
When a dozen Ursuline nuns arrived in New Orleans from Rouen, France, in 1727, their convent, located in a different location than today’s, was not yet built. The cornerstone was blessed in 1730. Construction delays postponed its completion until 1734. So, “construction delays” are a story as old as New Orleans. Older, really.
A 1726 treaty with the Company of the Indies stated the nuns’ mission was to “relieve the poor sick and provide at the same time for the education of young girls.” Added Sister Marie-Madeleine Hachand, in a letter to her father shortly after the nuns’ arrival: “Our principal aim is to gain souls for the Lord, and he gives us the grace to succeed.”
Construction was completed on their second convent, the Louis XV-style structure that stands today, in 1752.
St. Mary’s Catholic Church was built on the grounds in 1845. The nuns departed the French Quarter in 1824 for a new convent downriver. Restoration after Hurricane Betsy led to a 1978 rededication. Since 2004, the convent and nearby St. Louis Cathedral have been unified under the title Catholic Cultural Heritage Center.
Damage from Hurricane Katrina in 2005 caused a 16-month repair project, and prompted the move of the Archdiocesan Archives, which had been stored here since 1977, to a different location. The convent has housed, at various times, a school, an archive of Catholic records, a residence for church leaders, a meeting place for the Louisiana Legislature, and now a museum dedicated to the history of the nuns and the role the Catholic church played in the city’s history. More here.
Overview
Panel displays inside the museum trace the history, including the note that enslaved people owned by the nuns handled “the physically demanding tasks of food acquisition and preparation, cooking, laundry, gardening, cleaning, nursing and the caretaking of this complex and its inhabitants.”
The museum experience today begins in the gift shop, the small building with an entrance off of Chartres Street where admission is paid. From there, visitors pass through an exquisitely manicured garden, with St. Mary’s Church to the left, the convent straight ahead.
Displays inside cover the nuns’ arrival and lives in New Orleans, an overview of funeral and burial traditions in the city, and the history of the convent itself. Built for the archbishops of New Orleans in 1845, St. Mary’s has operated under several names, including at one time St. Mary’s Italian Church, for its service of Italian and Sicilian immigrants who then populated the French Quarter. Though churches had existed on its site for decades, St. Louis Cathedral as it appears today actually post-dates St. Mary’s.
Current changing exhibits include “Sunday Best: Faith, Family, and Fashion,” which examines church finery worn by both parishoners and clergy (learn more about it here), and “Rooted in Faith: Pope Leo XIV’s Louisiana Lineage,” a family tree assembled from the Archdiocesan Archives of baptism, marriage, funeral, and burial records once stored in the convent.
It’s a remarkable story. More here.
The convent museum promises an engaging hour of learning, more if you’re a read-every-word “diver.”)
Must-see objects
Reproductions of some of the documents researchers used to trace Robert Francis Prevost’s lineage, which led them to discover that some of Prevost’s ancestors were free people of color, some born into slavery.
A clock, elements of which were brought from France by the first nuns. It traveled with nuns who left New Orleans to establish a convent in Galveston, Texas, survived the 1900 hurricane, and was returned to New Orleans early in the 20th century.
The floating cypress stairway seen in the entryway was part of the original 1734 convent. “It is the only open, winding staircase remaining in an American colonial building,” says a nearby label.
Museum store
It’s tiny, and packed with keepsakes that will be most meaningful to visiting Catholics.
Parking
Free street parking can usually be had on Esplanade, two and a half blocks away. Paid lot parking is available in the nearby Marigny and between the river and Jackson Square.
Lunch
You are block from Coop’s Place, three from Central Grocery. Verti Mart is a block in the opposite direction.
Drinks
Harry’s Corner is where to maybe meet some locals while avoiding rum-sozzled tourist mobs.
Website
The site offers a thorough introduction to the stories inside the museum and church, including many beautiful photos. The “Rooted in Faith” page includes links to digital versions of the records used to research the exhibit, as well as a zoomable digital version of the family tree on view in the museum.
Extra thing
About those vampires. The story of the so-called “Casket Girls” of New Orleans has an Old Ursuline Convent angle. “Like most good legends, this one starts with a kernel of truth, which is then swathed in the fantastical and wrapped in the sublimely ridiculous,” wrote Mike Scott in an authoritative and sublimely wry 2022 telling for nola.com. “Adding to that intrigue: a dose of history, a dash of religion and an intriguing hint of innocence lost — followed by 300 years of implied gore.” Following the Ursuline nuns, a shipment of women arrived from France in New Orleans in 1728. Their mission was to provide marriage-age companions for male colonists. They carried a unique piece of luggage and were known as Filles à la Cassettes — “girls with luggage” — but cassettes was somehow mangled to casquettes, and so a macabre legend came to life. (The New Orleans Storyville Museum has a French valuables box “of the type used by the Filles à la Cassettes” on view among its collection of objects.) According to the lore (sometimes known to be transmitted by tour guides standing near the convent’s entrance on Chartres Street), the wee caskets contained vampires, who were contained in the attic of the convent, which was sealed by nails blessed by a pope. Not to drive a wooden stake through the story, but as the chronology far above details, today’s convent was built a couple of decades after the Filles arrived.