625-627 Chartres St.

625 Chartres Street

Erected: 1796-1803
Architect: unknown
Builder: unknown

This plot of ground, now only twenty-four-and-a-half feet wide, once formed part of a fifty foot lot. The proportions of this lot were apparently shaved down some time late in the eighteenth century and the extra footage added to the St. Peter Street corner, though no known transaction indicates this today. However, the earliest maps show the St. Peter Street corner property to be larger than the normal 60' by 120' F.M. grant, and this lot to have been somewhat narrower than 60' F.M.

This was the lot granted on the 1722 map to Sieur Bruslé, member of the first Superior Council and one of the important men who came with Bienville to establish and govern the new city of New Orleans. It was inherited by his daughter Luisa, who married Claude Joseph Favrot. Their daughter Louise Favrot married Alexandro de Clouet of New Orleans and St. Martinville, and it was he, we see from these records, who sold the land to Don Vincent Joseph Nunez, Treasurer of the Royal Army in the Spanish period. Early maps show a dwelling on this lot set back from the street, with a hipped roof. This was probably much like Mme. John's Legacy. Two small outbuildings existed in the yard.

Nunez sold this, along with the adjacent property, to Don Joseph Xavier de Pontalba in 1789, a year after the first great fire; and the big house would surely have been destroyed since the fire began in Nunez' own home next door. But building seems to have boomed immediately, for by 1789 there were already "two small houses of one story, flat roofed, divided into four rooms, with chimneys and halls" which had been rebuilt on this lot.

In 1794 another great fire occurred in this block, around the corner on Royal Street in the rear of Mr. Mayronne's property, and it is probable that the "two small houses of one story" were destroyed. Yet when the Baron Pontalba passed this property on to Joseph Pibernet y Mongol in 1796, it is described as having two adjoining houses with partition walls. In 1802 Mongol sold to Joseph Cheyron "two adjoining houses with partition walls", but in 1803, when Cheyron sold a half-lot to Santiago Devigne, the property is described as "...a two story brick house on a lot on Chartres Street having 23' front by 120' of depth F.M... with a party wall of 12' in height dividing it from building of Jose Cheyron and on the other side is a corresponding wall." Since no building contract exists, and no reference was made to when it was built, it is necessary to rely on conjecture and assume that the building could have been built at any time from 1796 to 1803.

The appearance of this building tells us something of its age. It looks old, and to a singular degree seems to have suffered little change. A brick two story building, it is encased in the usual plaster coating for protection. The entire ground floor is sheathed in a wooden shop front. This is a very early type, flat and flush with the sidewalk. Below the shop windows are wooden panels of refined detail, and at the sides are squared columns, similarly paneled, that serve as containers for triple shutters, when they are folded back from the windows. The windows are large-paned with heavy muntins, and the double entrance doors are paned and paneled on the same scale. On the second floor are two French doors that open onto a simple wooden gallery with wooden posts and railings. The canopy edge is decorated with a row of minute dentils that add a lively touch to this simple façade.

This property was tied up in an estate in France during the 1840s. Then it was purchased by the Fassy family, and it was during their ownership, which lasted to 1866, that this was the famous "Restaurant des Quatre Saisons." Later the Four Seasons moved a block closer to Canal Street. This building was owned by Le Petit Theatre for a while, but it has recently been returned to private ownership.

"Quarter Haunts of Famous Writers Provide Unique Tour:

When you stroll through the streets of the French Quarter you are walking in the footsteps of many famous American and European authors. Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, Tennessee Williams, Washington Irving, Thornton Wilder, Carl Sandberg and Booth Tarkington are among the host of major literary figures who have frequented or lived in the Vieux Carre.

...625. Chartres. During the 1920s, this was the home of a retired Storyville madam known as Aunt Rose Arnold. She was over six feet tall and a friend of bohemians in the area. Sherwood Anderson describes her in 'A Meeting South,' and Faulkner may have patterned his character Miss Rebecca of 'Sanctuary' and 'The Reivers' after Aunt Rose."