Pontalba Buildings - New Orleans, LA
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The Pontalba Buildings form two sides of Jackson Square in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana. They are matching red-brick, one-block-long, four-story buildings built in the late 1840s by the Baroness Micaela Almonester Pontalba.
Waymark Code: WM12D09
Location: Louisiana, United States
Date Posted: 05/01/2020
Views: 1
Excerpt from the New Orleans City Guide 1938: "The Pontalba Buildings. The two huge red-brick buildings flanking Jackson Square on St Peter and St. Ann Sts. were built by the Baroness de Pontalba in 1840. Few buildings in the French Quarter are better known, and few have had a more colorful history."
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Baroness Pontalba, an accomplished businesswoman, invested in real estate, purchasing the land on the upriver and downriver sides of the Place d’Armes. She constructed two Parisian-style row house buildings between 1849-51, at a cost of over $300,000. The buildings include the first recorded instance in the city of the use of cast iron galleries', which set a fashion that soon became the most prominent feature of the city's residential architecture. The cast-iron panels on the first floor balustrade feature her initials, 'BP', intertwined in the design.
The building fronting Rue St. Peter, upriver from Jackson Square, is the upper Pontalba. The building on the other side, fronting Rue St. Ann, is the lower Pontalba Building.
Both building were declared a National Historic Landmark in 1974 for their early and distinctive architecture.
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