1011 Canal Street, New Orleans, LA 70112
Website, reservations, social links here
- A stunning renovation combining four historic buildings into a 32-unit luxury apartment-style hotel, the Mayfair is ideally located for a museumgoing visit to New Orleans, especially for groups.
- With a legacy that reaches into the 19th-century music-publishing business, Prohibition-era dance-hall hijinks, and 1960s Civil Rights history, the property touches a century-plus of New Orleans history and culture.
The history
The Mayfair, a 32-unit luxury apartment-style hotel catering to groups (one unit sleeps 14), takes its name from a department store that operated from 1951 to 1981 out of some of the property’s buildings, but the site’s history goes back much further.
At the turn of the 20th century, the building at Canal’s intersection with Burgundy (to your far right if viewing from the neutral ground, or 1001 Canal), housed the Junius Hart Piano House. Hart cashed in on the popularity of the 8th Cavalry Mexican Military Band’s residency at the 1884 World’s Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition, held on the site of today’s Audubon Park. Three decades before jazz became the city’s soundtrack, the Mexican Band captured the ears of local music lovers. “There has never been a band which has taken such hold on the affections of the people of New Orleans, not only on account of its artistic ability, but the individual and social qualifications of its members,” wrote the Daily Picayune. Hart sold a lot of sheet music riding the Mexican Band wave (listen to a version of their biggest hit here, then quietly admire my sly wordplay leading up to these parentheses). Hart also sold pianos.
The second-floor space that once housed Hart’s family was later converted to a taxi-dance hall, called the Arcadia and later the Alamo, where men would pay to dance with women. Key figures in New Orleans music history, including Danny Barker and Percy Humphrey, played for the dancers.
Dorothy Day, a “girl reporter” for the New Orleans Item, went undercover as one of the Arcadia’s dancers. Her riotous account was published February 4, 1924, (read it here and here). Though it was the height (or depths, FFS) of Prohibition, there was “drink in abundance,” Day wrote. Also available, at least as offered to the dancers by chivalrous men who offered to “escort” the dancers home, were “Mary Warner” cigarettes. The men assured “us that ‘they sure would give us a lift – much better than whiskey because you woke up in the morning without a head,’” Day wrote. “As to whether the girls accept offers of ‘Mary Warner’ cigarettes, we don’t know. We only know from our inquiries that all the girls had heard of them, all had been offered them, and all knew some girls that smoked them.”
As a walk down today’s Canal Street at any time of the day or night demonstrates, the herbal temptations faced by the Arcadia’s employees remain available in abundance.
Photos of the buildings now occupied by the Mayfair archived by the Historic New Orleans Collection’s Vieux Carré Survey show several names on the storefronts over the years: Viva, Burt’s, Allens Smart Shoes, Simply Fashion, High Beauty.
The most significant brand to students of 20th-century history is McCrory’s, a department store whose marquee is still used by the Ruby Slipper breakfast-brunch cafe. The lunch counter at the McCrory’s five-and-dime was, in September 1960, the site of a Civil Rights action by college students to protest the city’s still-entrenched segregation. The four were arrested, but appealed, eventually to the US Supreme Court. New Orleans stores continued to segregate, and dozens of them along Canal were subject to further demonstrations and a boycott. More here and here.
The property
From the classy lobby off the Canal Street entry to the rooftop decks, the Mayfair is a stunning restoration. A wander through the guest-room halls showed the accommodations necessary to align the multiple buildings into one, as corridors dropped up and down via ramps and stairs. As at the Old. No. 77 Hotel and Chandlery, support beams from the original buildings sometimes wander into a corridor.
A representative for the hotel was kind enough to give me a tour of the room that had once been the Arcadia ballroom. The suite is huge, luxurious, swell, etc. But the key thing to know: An ornate plaster frieze depicting dancing maidens frames the ceiling throughout the space. It somehow survived from the days of the taxi-dancers and was restored during the Mayfair renovation. The maidens are echoed in signage around the building, and the significance of the space is acknowledged in a tabletop placard in the suite, which includes a 1922 Times-Picayune clipping announcing its opening. “The Arcadia management announced it is determined to maintain a tone of refinement,” it is reported. The dancing maidens – Muses? – are visible in a photo accompanying the clipping.
Given the property’s target market of reveling groups, there are likely evenings in the space that rival the action Dorothy Day witnessed in 1924.
Find incredible pre-restoration photos from the Preservation Resource Center here.
Guest experience
My two-night stay there in March 2026 (sponsored by the hotel) allowed me a prime location for museumgoing and a great kick-back place to restore. My room had two bedrooms, a full kitchen, and a big room facing Canal with a dining table and lounging area with a big-screen TV. Remarkable, given the nonstop ruckus occurring just outside, but there was very little street noise in the room. Note: The downriver entrance to the Morial Convention Center is a 24-minute walk.
Food and drink
As usual in this neighborhood, there are tons of restaurants to fit most budgets within a few blocks. The lines downstairs for breakfast and brunch indicate that this Ruby Slipper outlet is doing the work. My breakfast there was excellent. Across Canal and down a block, the Fiery Crab will meet all of your boiled-shelfish needs. Cut through the Fairmont (er, Roosevelt, see below) lobby to find your way to Domenica for an Italian nosh.
Nearest martini: The Original Roosevelt Bar, which is not affiliated with the large historic hotel next door with that name, had a good one. The gloriously divey joint has a story in that it opened when the big hotel next door was called the Fairmont. It had been named that for decades but locals still called it the Roosevelt, which is what it was called before it was called the Fairmont. It is now called the Roosevelt again, but not by me. When I moved to New Orleans, it was the Fairmont, which is what I will always call it.
Early coffee: My room had a machine with plenty of high-quality pods.
Location
Set amid a streetcar hub with lines running in multiple directions, and within easy walking distance of French Quarter museums and attractions, the Mayfair is ideal for museumgoing crews, especially those who might want to shave some meal costs by cooking or reheating in their temporary accommodations. (The kitchens are fully appointed; the hotel offers a pre-arrival fridge-stocking service, too, as well as a private-chef experience.) Though not its primary visitor target, cultural tourists looking for an upscale stay in the middle of everything would do much, much worse. It’s also super-convenient to the Saenger Theater, an early-20th-century movie palace that now welcomes touring Broadway theater and concerts.
Website
Smartly detailed and deeply browsable, the site allows prospective guests to look carefully at each of the rooms. A section offers dining/event/attraction recommendations; another answers your FAQs.
Parking
There are three pay lots in or near the Mayfair. The McCrory’s pay garage, directly behind the hotel entrance, is entered from either Bienville or Iberville Street. The space was once a part of the old department store.
Extra thing
There is no gym on-site, but the Mayfair has an arrangement with the excellent Downtown Fitness Center in the vertical Canal Place mall. Day passes, offered through the hotel, are $10. However, the New Orleans Athletic Club, just around the corner from the hotel, is where history-minded visitors should go to bend and stretch. Founded in 1872 and located in its current grand location since 1929, the NOAC has hosted John L. Sullivan, Johnny Weismuller, Clark Gable, and many others. Tennessee Williams swam here. Wrote David Thier (Garden & Gun, 2014): “The New Orleans Athletic Club is a real gym, albeit a gym with chandeliers, a bar, a library, and literal tons of marble.” Day passes are $30.