Columns

About

Along St. Charles Avenue, where the streetcar glides past oak trees and iron fences, the Columns Hotel stands with the quiet confidence of a nineteenth century mansion that has watched the city change around it. Built in 1883 for merchant Simon Hernsheim, the house was designed by architect Thomas Sully in a stately Italianate style, its broad façade framed by a procession of white columns that give the hotel its name and its theatrical presence. Step onto the deep veranda and the rhythm of New Orleans slows immediately. Ceiling fans stir the warm air while the green streetcar rattles by like a moving postcard. Inside, tall windows, dark wood, and high ceilings preserve the proportions of the original residence, offering a glimpse of the era when St. Charles Avenue was the proud boulevard of the city’s mercantile elite. The mansion later became a boarding house and then a hotel, gathering generations of locals, writers, and wandering observers who come for a drink on the porch and stay for the atmosphere. In a city famous for spectacle, the Columns offers something rarer: elegance that feels entirely at ease with time.