344 Camp Street, New Orleans LA, 70130
Website, social handles, reservations here.
- The Q&C Hotel | Bar was built in the early 20th century to house railroad office workers, and was named for the Queen & Crescent route connecting the Queen City (Cincinnatti) and the Crescent City (New Orleans). For the past few decades, it’s been a boutique hotel that makes subtle references to its railway history.
- With a lobby bar and a laid-back vibe, it offers a convenient base for museumgoers interested in history, culture, and comfort.
The history
A stay at the Q&C is a trip through several different histories. Built in 1913 by Frank B. Hayne and Hugh de Lacy Vincent – described in print several decades later as “prominent cotton men” – the 12-story main building was once downtown’s tallest building. Its original purpose was to house office space for the New Orleans & Northeastern Railroad and other lines, back in the days when rail ruled. They and architect Frank P. Graveley are credited on a cornerstone near the entrance.
The building was named for the NO&NR flagship Queen & Crescent rail route connecting Cincinnati (the Queen City) and New Orleans (the Crescent City) and destinations between and beyond. The line itself had been in existence for several decades by the time the building was erected. The Queen & Crescent Limited, a luxury passenger train, operated over the route from 1926 to 1949. The route is remembered in a Historic New Orleans Collection holding, ca. 1895 sheet music for the “Queen & Crescent Route March” by Herman Bellstedt Jr. dedicated to “his friend” W.C. Rinearson, once the general passenger agent of the route.
The property
The office building changed hands several times over its life, and once was renamed the Medallion Tower.
For a time in the mid-1980s, the University of New Orleans Metropolitan College took over a few floors, where for-credit and noncredit courses were offered to downtown business workers. According to a newspaper ad around that time, UNO offered a Personal Computer Learning Center in the facility, offering “noncredit classes, seminars and workshops” for “anyone wanting to become part of the computer generation.” Concluded the copy: “Get in touch with yourself and your future.”
By the mid-1990s, that future would fall to Warren Reuther, a “tourism tycoon,” according to a newspaper account of his purchase of the building. With partners, he bought it to convert it into a 67-room hotel. Among other interests, Reuther ran a riverboat casino, tour buses, airport shuttle service, travel agency, a convention-planning company, and excursion riverboats – one of which, the Creole Queen, still embarks from the riverfront.
At the time of Reuther’s acquisition of the property, there were 18 hotel projects in the works in the nearby area, including several similar conversions of office structures.
“I got tired of hearing that you couldn’t find a hotel room,” he said at the time. “So we decided to open our own hotel.”
In 1998, Reuther and partners purchased the ca. 1910 Dameron-Pierson Building across Natchez Street to add even more rooms.
The hotel changed hands several times in this century. Its most recent renovation was in 2014, which is when its branding switched from the Queen & Crescent to the Q&C, an Autograph Collection by Marriott property. The room total in the towers now is 196.
Guest experience
The two-tower campus is a little odd, but both lobbies are lovely. The main lobby and bar address some of the hotel’s history with artwork that recalls the glory days of the Queen & Crescent line. That history is most sublimely expressed in guest-room wallpaper, believe it or not, which features images of a locomotive and the facade of the Southern Railway Terminal. Once at the corner of Canal and Basin, the terminal building was designed by Architect Daniel H. Burnham. Demolished in 1955, it would’ve been where the Queen & Crescent arrived to deposit those Cincinnati folk.
Brick and hardwood floors are the overall motif of the guest rooms. Also a little concrete. A cool design touch I loved was the whimsical tableau that becomes visible on every floor when the elevator doors open.
My king-bed room was a little tight (with a small but very nice bathroom), but I managed to find space to roll out a yoga mat. My two-night stay in June 2025 cost $288, tax included, which is on the upper end of the bargain range for this neighborhood. There is a fitness center, in-room coffee makers, and pets are OK (with a nonrefundable $75 fee). Descendants of UNO Personal Computer Learning Center alumni will be gratified to know that there is such a thing as wi-fi, it works great, and is free.
My room faced Camp Street, and a recorded warning played whenever pedestrians crossed the exit to a parking garage across the street. Not a big deal. Felt kind of big city, to be honest. If I’d had a recording of the “Queen & Crescent Route March,” I might’ve turned it up a notch.
Food and drink
“Bar” is in the hotel’s title, so there you go. It’s in the main lobby and has a small kitchen that serves breakfast and pub food from 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. And, bravely, gumbo. I had some, and it was correct. Good on the kitchen. Redeem your Mardi Gras doubloon, issued at check-in, on a complementary glass of wine, one per night. Other breakfast and lunch options include Majoria’s Commerce Restaurant, where the po boys and red beans and rice have been feeding downtown office workers for decades. The pandemic moved the joint to table service from cafeteria-style, but it’s still a classic. Speaking of makeovers, Bon Ton Prime Rib recently had one (converting from the venerable Cajun-cuisine favorite Bon Ton Cafe), but the experience of dining in a space that has served generations of New Orleanians remains. And the prime rib is “compulsively good,” says Times-Picayune restaurant writer Ian McNulty.
Early coffee: Just around the corner on Poydras Street, a Starbucks opens at 4:30 a.m.
Nearest martini: An elevator ride away. Luke, a block away on St. Charles, has a raw bar and a cool, old-world bistro vibe.
Location
Three blocks to the French Quarter. Five blocks to the Museum District. One block (or two, depending on which direction you’re riding) to the St. Charles streetcar line. Conventiongoers note: The Q&C is a 14-minute walk to the main downriver entrance to the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. If you’re in town for a confab, block out an hour to see the Louisiana Civil Rights Museum just inside the convention center’s entrance.
Website
Pretty pictures and a comprehensive overview of what’s offered. Also discounted specials and a best-price guarantee on room rates. Nothing about the hotel’s history, however.
Parking
The hotel offers $50 per day valet parking. A few surface lots and garages nearby may have slightly better rates, but not by much.
Extra things
- The Q&C towers sit on one end of what was once Newspaper Row, which in the mid-19th century housed several of the city’s 15 newspapers and periodicals. Picayune Place, the alleyway behind the Q&C, is named for one of the city’s flagship mastheads, which was situated on the row. The neighborhood was such a magnet for newsboys that the Sisters of Mercy of St. Alphonsus installed a refuge for the children, many of whom were otherwise unhoused, at what is now 324 Picayune Place. For an 1899 pamphlet in the Loyola University Special Collections & Archives, Rev. A.C. Porta described the junior circulation associates this way: “Of the many creatures we see around us endowed with the power of locomotion, there is none whose nature is so little known as the barefooted, flitting, noisy, ubiquitous newsboy. To the casual observer he is a compound of cat and monkey, with a strong admixture of quicksilver. In the opinion of many the newsboy has no father, no mother, no brothers, no sisters, no cousins, no friends, no particular home…Alas! the want of a home and the lack of friends are but too often sad undeniable facts.” Richard Campanella remembers the row here. An 1880s view of the row is here.
- At the downriver end of Picayune Place, at 526 Gravier, is the former Tobacco Plant Saloon, where William Sydney Porter, a larcenous bookkeeper on the lam from the Texas law by working newspaper jobs in New Orleans (been there), discovered his pen name, O. Henry. For the Picayune, Mike Scott spins the yarn here.
