1132 Royal Street, New Orleans, LA 70116
Website, tickets, social follows here.
- The Gallier House museum offers a window into New Orleans life just as it was about to change.
- Excellent guided tours tell the stories of its inhabitants, including the enslaved servants who worked there in the brief months between the house’s completion and the Civil War, as well as an overview of the home’s state-of-the-art-for-its-era amenities, which included hot and cold running water and an indoor toilet.
The history
The Royal Street of 1860 that James Gallier Jr. emerged onto from his newly completed home was a panorama of the city’s architectural and social composition at that moment. The lot he built on was once owned by the nearby Ursuline Convent. To one side was a mineral-water bottling company, a few doors away was the reconstructed and already infamous LaLaurie Mansion. Across the street, a collection of row houses had been in place for decades. Nearby, a tailor shop is believed to have been operated by free men of color. Gallier was a slaveholder.
The neighborhood was a combination of dwellings and commercial buildings, operating a couple of blocks from the bustling riverfront and French Market. The street and sidewalk banquettes – separated by a deep gutter, according to photos from the era – were paved but even rougher than the perilous French Quarter sidewalks of the present.
Gallier was a preeminent architect who had inherited his father James Gallier Sr.’s equally preeminent architecture practice a decade earlier. He officed with partner Richard Esterbrook at 11 Carondelet Street in a development built by his father and had recently overseen the completion of the French Opera House at Bourbon and Toulouse Streets, one of the city’s cultural landmarks until its destruction by fire in 1919.
James Jr. and his wife Josephine (known by her middle name, Aglaé) had four daughters. He died in 1868, his funeral held in the home. Three of his daughters continued to reside there until it was sold in 1917.
Several ownership changes over the next century (including some time as a rooming house) led to the house’s restoration and dedication as a museum in June 1971. Tulane University owned the property for a bit, and it was transferred to the Women’s Exchange, already operating the older Hermann-Grima Historic House at 820 St. Louis Street. The house museums remain historic siblings, telling separate stories of 19th-century life in the French Quarter.
Overview
A combination of Creole and American townhouse styles, the Gallier House is restored to reflect the brief period when it was occupied by the full family and enslaved servants and later domestic workers. The stories of all are told on the guided tours that take visitors through the home. On the tours, emphasis is placed on the home’s mechanical luxuries, and seasonal stagings reflect “summer dress” accommodations during the torrid months, a “Creole Death & Mourning” look during the fall, and Christmas-season decorations.
Like all of the house museums in the French Quarter, Gallier House is careful to include the lives of the enslaved who worked there in its storytelling – their jobs, living conditions, and what is known about their lives. Like all of the French Quarter house museums, Gallier House is a must-visit if you’re interested in the urban antebellum way of life as lived by upper social classes. Lately, these museums also offer a way to learn about the massively less romantic lives of the enslaved workers who made the owners’ posh lifestyle possible. The contrast between the Galliers’ master bedroom and the room assigned to enslaved servant Laurette – the finest of the slave-quarters rooms in the house, but nonetheless bleak – tells the story.
Must-see object
The second-floor bathroom represents a state-of-the-art domestic facility for its time, including a copper bathtub and decorated porcelain toilet bowl.
Public programs
The Gallier gift shop hosts a monthly Gallier Gathering book night. Seasonal after-hours tours of the house highlight the “Creole Death & Mourning” decor that represents the state of the home as the family would’ve grieved the death of James Jr.
Museum Store
Look for items that incorporate the front entrance’s distinctive grillwork. Local artisans and authors are featured.
Parking
The usual expensive French Quarter mess. A huge pay lot on the riverfront is walkable. Esplande Avenue, where in most seasons free street parking can be had, is a two-block walk.
Lunch
Verti Marte is crazy-convenient, and funky in the extreme.
Drinks
History-wise, you’re in this deep, so hike a couple of blocks and join the crowds at Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop, a structure ca. the Spanish Colonial era. So, both James Sr. and Jr. would’ve known it, though not as a tavern, a brand shift that didn’t happen until the 20th century.
Website
The website’s “Shifting Landscapes” virtual tour of Gallier House is a click-by-click survey of the home from the “Paris green” cast iron front gate (believed to have been designed by James Jr.), through the carriageway and into and behind the rooms of the home to show its furnishings, artwork, fixtures, bedrooms, and servants’ quarters. It’s a fascinating resource (with a heightened focus on the lives of the enslaved) for anyone planning a tour or revisiting what they’ve learned after seeing the home, and one of the best uses of digital media seen on any of the local museum websites. This means of digitally capturing and displaying a museum’s visitor experiences should be standard practice at any history, art, or cultural institution – especially those that mount changing or temporary exhibitions, which disappear forever after the closing date.
Otherwise, the website is functional and cleanly rendered. A shared events calendar displays upcoming public programs for both Gallier and Hermann-Grima. Combo tickets may be purchased on the site.
Extra thing
Popular culture has recently produced a kind of visitor less interested in futuristic-for-1860 indoor plumbing than they are in the home’s undead fictional inhabitants. The house was seen in the first season of the AMC series Interview with the Vampire as home to the characters Lestat, Louis, and Claudia. The exterior stood in for the LaLaurie Mansion in the first season of American Horror Story: Coven.