The Hotel Monteleone Of The New Orleans French Quarter

By | October 11, 2019

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Entrance of the Hotel Monteleone, New Orleans, during Tales of the Cocktail" 2011. Source: (Wikimedia Commons)

Often hailed as the most haunted city in the United States, New Orleans is home to a number of locations reputed to house the undead. Among those locations is the Hotel Monteleone. At more than one hundred and thirty years old, the Hotel Monteleone has a long history, which includes visits from a number of renowned literary patrons. As to the rumors of it being haunted, the details are vague but a quick search on TripAdvisor will reveal quite a few guests who claim to have been visited or, in some cases, pranked by the hotel’s resident ghosts.

The hotel is a part of the New Orleans French Quarter, which ironically consists of more Spanish than French architecture due to the fires of 1788 and 1794 during which time New Orleans was under Spanish control. The ethnic composition of the French Quarter shifted again after the Civil War when Italian families began to settle in New Orleans. By the 1890s, the Italian community dominated the area and many businesses of the French Quarter were owned by Italian-American businessmen by this time. One of those businesses was the Hotel Monteleone.

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Plaque dedicated to Antonio Monteleone. Source: (cable-car-guy.com)

When he arrived in New Orleans in 1880, Antonio Monteleone was a Sicilian shoemaker. His first business in the French Quarter was a cobbler shop which he opened on Rue Royale. The success of this shop allowed him to make a larger investment in 1886 so he decided to buy a small hotel at the corner of Rue Iberville and Rue Royale. Shortly afterward, he also purchased the Commercial Hotel next door, which allowed him to expand. The Commercial Hotel was expanded again in 1903 with the addition of thirty rooms. In 1908, he expanded again, this time adding three hundred rooms, and changed the property name to Hotel Monteleone.