616-618 Royal St.

"Enrico Caruso made his headquarters at 616 Royal Street when he was in New Orleans."

616-618, 622-624 Royal Street

Erected: 1831
Architect: unknown
Builder: unknown

These identical, three-story brick buildings are almost perfect examples of Creole architecture of the prosperous 1830s. To a remarkable degree little change has occurred to these great dwellings. 622-624, in particular, is much as it must have been in 1831 when it was built by Dr. Isidore Labatut. In proportions and refinement of detail this is among the finest buildings in the Vieux Carre.

The brick face is covered with smooth stucco. Up under the roof line, until fairly recently, there was a fine wooden cornice of moldings and a double row of dentils. Other excellent details are the moldings on all the piers supporting the ground floor arches. These great arched openings are classic examples of their kind. Many buildings here once followed this pattern. Each arch is adorned with a fan transom protected by the typical screen of iron bars. The carriage entrance has great paneled double doors, with a smaller door cut into the frame for foot passengers. The other arched openings on the ground floor are covered by heavy batten shutters with strap hinges.

The building at 616-618 has suffered some change on the ground level, with one opening adapted to a shop window and the other covered with a conventional screen door. All other openings on the second and third floors are square-headed now, extending to the ground, and faced with louvred and paneled shutters. On the second floor these windows give onto a pleasing wrought iron gallery reaching across the face of both buildings. A distinctive garde de frise, bristling like a devil's pitchfork, divides the continuous gallery here between the two houses. The handrail is enlivened with brass balls at agreeable intervals across the facade.

Individual galleries, repeating details of the extensive second floor gallery, protect windows at the third floor level. A simple dormer of particularly fine detail embellishes the steep roof line. The great driveway extends the depth of the house, at the rear of which, under an arcaded gallery, a typical Creole stairway winds all the way up to the attic. Extending from the body of the house is a three story kitchen and service wing, with all its galleries and catwalks still intact. Vast, original flagstones still pave the old courtyard, and the parterred garden plots conform to the early pattern. Across the end of the lot are two, story structures, which in the heyday of these houses were stables, with coachmens' quarters up above. A few minor changes have converted these rear buildings into artists' studios and apartments.

The building at 622-624 is unique among Vieux Carre dwellings. From the day it was built in 1831 to the past few years it has remained in the hands of one family, the Labatut-Puig relationship. Not only that, but until 1953 it was actually lived in, and in the grand manner, by the elderly descendants of this aristocratic line. Since the death of Miss Ysabel Puig the new owner has converted her home into apartments and studios, but nothing has been done to mar the antique serenity of the whole exterior facade. This building is a social document of the 1830s and merits close study by anyone interested in Vieux Carre restoration.

The other building, 616-618 Royal Street, has seen many owners. Dr. Isidore Labatut, who built them both on a standard 60' by 120' F.M. lot, lived in one and rented the other. Many of the most distinguished Creole families in the city dwelt here at one time. According to Miss Puig, who gave an interview to the NEW ORLEANS STATES on September 26, 1926 (p.1, c. 2-4), "[s]ome of the oldest Creole families in New Orleans have lived there. [These included t]he families of Pitot, Ledoux, Ferrier, Currie-Duncan, Alpuente and Urquhart. It was in this house that the famous Ferrier ball was given. Mr. Ferrier, who was the great-grandfather of George Ferrier, so many years the clerk of the City Commission Council, gave that ball for his daughter about 1859. She later was Mrs. Destrehan. Scores and scores of invitations were sent out and everybody accepted. Mr. Ferrier suddenly discovered that the crowd would be too big for their house, so he went next door, made arrangements with Dr. Labatut, my grandfather there, had workmen tear down the iron balcony partition and used the drawing and reception rooms of both houses for a social function so brilliant that the memory of it still lingers in every old Creole family of New Orleans today...."

The first floors of both these houses served as offices. 622-624 is noted for having been the law office of the Bermudez family. First to occupy the space was Judge Joachim Bermudez. His son Edward Bermudez, who afterwards became Chief Justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court, worked here. And Edward Douglas White, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court understudied as a law student here. The great wooden doors at this address still bear the old name plate saying "Isidore Labatut, M.D."

But this spot has another and earlier claim to fame. For it was on this lot that the great fire of December 8, 1794 broke out. Of this, the Baron Carondelet report[ed] "...I am imparting to your Excellency that on the 8th of the current month, at two o'clock in the afternoon, a fire was started on Royal Street by some children, who were inadvertently playing in the patio of Don Francisco Meyonne, close to a warehouse in which hay was stored. The fire was so devastating, due to the sudden force of a violent north wind, that in less than three hours, two hundred and twelve houses, and the most valuable warehouses of the city were reduced to ashes...."

It was from the heirs of this Francois Mayronne that Dr. Labatut bought his land in 1831. It had been Mayronne property since 1783 when Don Francisco acquired it from Juan Reynaud. The record continues back through several sales and mortgages to 1781 and all these transactions indicate a house of 50' F.M. across the front of the lot "...built of brick between posts, shingle roof." In 1781 a M[adame] Risenor sold this property, and it says in the record that she inherited it from her husband, though no date for the succession is given and no further data has turned up on this transaction. And here the narrative trickles out until the early maps on which we see that this land was assigned in 1731 to one named Ozane. In 1728 Autrere held it, and the de la Tour map of 1722 cites Sieur Ozane again at this site.

"On December 8, 1794 a second disastrous conflagration devastated New Orleans before the town had fully recovered from the effects of the fire of 1788. The fire started in the house of Don Francisco Mayronne on Royal Street (now 534 Royal St.) and quickly spread up-river to the southwest destroying everything in that quarter of the city"

[w/drawings]

"Quarter property sold - This property at 616-18 Royal St. in the French Quarter was sold recently by H. Hester Plauche and others to Jules L. Cahn and others for $500,000."

[w/photo]