1113 Chartres Street, New Orleans, LA 70116
Website, tickets, social feeds here.
- The Historic BK House & Gardens is a French Quarter preservation miracle, with guided tours detailing its two-century history.
- One of several great house museums in the neighborhood, it’s a must-see if you’re interested in social history, decorative arts, and architecture.
The history
Designed by Baltimore-born architect Francois Correjolles, the house at 1113 Chartres Street has been home to a world chess champion (Paul Morphy, born there in 1837), an important Confederate General and civil engineer (P.G.T. Beauregard, who rented for a few months after the Civil War), Sicilian liquor wholesalers (the Giacona clan, two of whom were never charged for shooting a band of “Black Hand” mafioso extortionists, killing three, on the home’s rear gallery), and author and pioneering preservationist Frances Parkinson Keyes.
Correjolles’s original plans for the house, as seen on the museum’s website, are dated August 11, 1826. Its bicentennial will be celebrated with a block party on that date in 2026.
Overview
The house’s occupants over the years are remembered in the 45-minute guided tours that take place mid-mornings and mid-afternoons except on Wednesday and Sunday. As is the case with other house museums in the French Quarter, the enslaved occupants are remembered as well, both in the guided tour and, in greater detail, on the museum’s website.
Built in a combination of styles – raised center hall Creole cottage with Greek Revival features – on land obtained from the Ursuline nuns, the house is supported by The Keyes Foundation (its owner) and Friends of the BK House. The garden has been the site of countless weddings and special events.
The story of the house, known as the Beauregard-Keyes House before a quiet rebranding a few years ago, is as much about its continual and costly preservation journey as the histories of its occupants over the centuries. Given that it was nearly demolished in the 1920s to be replaced by a pasta factory, and then served as a shelter for homeless men and housed a chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous before Keyes took on its restoration, the BK House’s existence is a French Quarter miracle. More here and here. The neighborhood’s collection of house museums, including the BK House, is must-see if you’re interested in social history, decorative arts, and architecture.
Public programs
The BK House hosts regular public programs, including an annual symposium. More here.
Website
Simple and effective, with drop-downs for public programs and visitation information. The key pages to pursue before or after your visit are a timeline history of the property (with text that hasn’t been updated to the “BK House” brand change presumably intended to distance the property from ol’ P.G.T., an itinerant occupant at most), and “Letters to Louise,” the result of a prompt in the house asking visitors to write messages to an enslaved woman who lived and worked there in the 1840s.
Lunch and drinks
For the brave authenticity pilgrim, the sandwiches at Verti Marte are a local staple. The muffalota sandwiches at Central Grocery are legendary, and would’ve been a favorite of the fightin’ Giaconas clan. Wakin’ Bakin’ at Dumaine and Dauphine has omelettes.
Parking
Similar to its neighbor the Old Ursuline Convent Museum, the BK House is near enough to Esplanade Avenue to find easy street parking there. Failing that, the surface paid lot at Decatur and Esplanade is also walkable.
Extra thing
Among Keyes’s titles: Dinner at Antoine’s and The Chess Players, a fictionalized but deeply researched account of Morphy’s life.