911 Burgundy Street, New Orleans, LA 70116
Website, reservations, social feeds here.
- The Hotel St. Pierre holds a place in New Orleans music history as the site of the first Jazz Museum. With nearly 80 rooms, several courtyards, and two pools, today the hotel embraces its history while offering bargain rates for comfortable accommodations.
- Located in the heart of the French Quarter, it’s a perfect HQ for a museumgoing visit to the Crescent City.
The history
The importance of the New Orleans Jazz Club – formed in 1948, it was a collective of buffs and scholars dedicated to the preservation of traditional (never “Dixieland”) New Orleans jazz – can’t be understated. Members of the private group took it upon themselves to collect instruments, sheet music, oral histories, photos, and more to document the music that changed the world in the early decades of the 20th century. Preservation Hall was a chronological contemporary of the New Orleans Jazz Museum, which opened in the building at 1017 Dumaine in 1961. Hotel St. Pierre guest rooms in the Jazz Museum Cottage now occupy the space.
There were other locations for the museum thereafter, and the collection eventually landed at the New Orleans Jazz Museum at the Old US Mint in the early 1980s, where it remains today. There are many object labels in the current museum that credit Jazz Club collectors. A large archive of the material are kept there and in other repositories around town, including the Historic New Orleans Collection. This HNOC oral history with early curator Don Marquis covers a lot of the relevant territory.
Unrelated: The building at the corner of Burgundy and Dumaine dates to 1780, per the exterior plaque there.
The property
At nearly 80 rooms, the St. Pierre winds through several courtyards behind the main entrance. There are two pools. The Burgundy Cottages, located across the street from the main entrance, can be booked for large parties, sleeping a total of 42 guests. The space was operated for several decades by the Original Morning Star Baptist Church.
Guest experience
My two-night hosted weeknight stay in May 2026 exposed me to a property that combines a historic setting with incredibly affordable rates. My first-floor room, located just beyond the pool area that guests enter when leaving the lobby, was available for less than $100 a night when I visited, a good fit with the not-fancy-but-fine space. The wall-unit air conditioner did its job. Though there were folks in the pool at the time of my evening check-in, it emptied out in plenty of time for quiet time and evening rest. The Hotel St. Pierre offers an opportunity to experience courtyard life – Caribbean-oasis spaces back from the street, with exterior room entrances – as many French Quarter residents know it. Including at least a couple of professionally indifferent courtyard cats.
The front-desk staff was stellar (an opinion shared by many online reviewers, who also generally praise the accommodations as clean, quaint, and authentic). When I asked there about references to the hotel’s history, they delivered a printed “scroll,” rolled and wrapped in string, that explained some of the details. There are visitors who come to this place specifically for this history; others come for the great rates and then get curious enough to learn how significant the Jazz Club was in preserving and repopularizing traditional New Orleans jazz.
My room didn’t have a desk but there was one in the lobby that allowed me to post-up in the mornings for online housekeeping. The lobby is also a nod to the Jazz Museum legacy, with framed articles, musical instruments, and old records decorating the walls. Spending time with all of it would be an hourlong dive for hip visitors who know the importance of the old LPs, horns, and photos. A plaque that’s part of one of the displays notes that Louis Armstrong was a guest of the hotel on October 31, 1965. It was Armstrong’s first visit to his hometown in many years, a hiatus to protest the city’s Jim Crow segregation and racism. But the Jazz Club members, with the assistance of Danny Barker, convinced Armstrong to play a concert to benefit the museum. It was also on this trip that Armstrong personally identified the cornet he played at the Colored Waifs Home, one of the many Jazz Club objects that eventually made its way to the current New Orleans Jazz Museum. During his 1965 visit to the original museum, Armstrong was reunited with Peter Davis, the Waifs Home band director at the time of Armstrong’s residency. From press coverage of the visit, it appears that Armstrong didn’t actually spend the night anywhere in town – the “scroll” and the hotel website note that this property didn’t become a hotel, the Crossbeam, until 1969 – but the plaque is worded in a way to acknowledge he was in the space, which is plenty. Much more about Armstrong’s 1965 visit here.
Food and drinks
Bar Tonique, a block up and a half-block over, has a highly regarded craft cocktail program. Buffa’s Bar & Restaurant, a few blocks in the other direction, is a sweet neighborhood hang that will expose you to a spectrum of cool locals. Or, just wander, dude. You’re in the French Quarter in New Orleans. Early coffee-havers should visit the 24-hour Clover Grill.
Location
Though only a few blocks from all the dissipating “action” on Bourbon Street the St. Pierre cultivates a “quiet part of the Quarter” atmosphere. Nearby cultural attractions are walkable, and the Rampart Street streetcar line – for connections to lines that travel through the Museum District and on to Uptown, as well as the red-car line that can take you to the New Orleans Museum of Art – is less than a block away. As you hike Dumaine to catch a ride, look to your left when crossing Rampart. The J&M Studio, which is where rock ‘n’ roll and R&B history was made, was located in what was, in recent local memory, a laundromat. The building was purchased in 2025 by the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation, which announced plans to repurpose it to recognize its ground-zero importance. Though legendary producer Cosimo Matassa moved on to other studios in the mid-1950s, J&M remains a global landmark in a neighborhood that also includes Congo Square, Preservation Hall, and, yes, the former site of the first Jazz Museum – destinations important to cultural pilgrims who find their way to New Orleans.
Website
An understated charmer, with accurate images of available rooms, special offers, dining recommendations, a comprehensive FAQ, and a listing of special events.
Parking
There is on-site self-parking in a lot across the street from the Burgundy entrance. An L-shaped space,
The lot costs $47.90 plus tax per night, which is a competitive price compared with other nearby lots. Park on the street to check in, and the front desk will direct you to the lot.
Extra things
- A placard at the front desk has a QR code that will take you to a Spotify playlist featuring music by the artists who have namesake rooms in the hotel. My room was the Jimmie Noone, in honor of the clarinetist and bandleader who worked Storyville as a kid, then moved on to Chicago and Los Angeles. His Wikipedia entry notes that Ravel based Bolero on a Noone improvisation.
- The Jazz Museum sign in a photo on this page from the Vieux Carré Survey appears to have made the move to the current New Orleans Jazz Museum. It’s above the check-in desk near the front entrance.
