Set the scene.
It’s hard not to have a childhood flashback as you tug open Hotel Peter & Paul’s heavy mint-green doors, painted with the words ‘School House’—especially if you were a Catholic school kid. Checking to see if your shoes are scuffed, you enter the foyer, which smells not of scolding and school lunches but of gardenias.
What’s the story behind it?
In New Orleans’s boho Marigny neighborhood, a former 19th-century Catholic church, school house, convent, and rectory have been reborn in the hands of wunder-design team Ash NYC. As with other Ash NYC hotels—The Dean in Providence, in the shell of a 1912 clergy house; The Siren, filling a Renaissance Revival building in downtown Detroit—the hotel doubles as a destination, with theatrical communal spaces that beg you to sit with a chicory coffee or a Sazerac and write something. Anything.
What about the rooms?
The apostolic chic extends to the rooms, where drapes and gingham chairs add coziness to the froideur (and stay the knowing side of kitsch). The design team went on several scouting trips to Europe and came back with more than 700 antiques to fill the 71 rooms; mostly in the old school house, but the grandest of them in the rectory, with antique fireplaces and four-poster beds. We stayed in a school house loft room, where a spiral staircase leads to a mezzanine bed with suitably crisp sheets. The sitting room downstairs features a stately hand-carved wooden desk, a rotary phone, and a series of monastic oil paintings.
How about the food and drink?
The Elysian Bar, on the ground floor of the former rectory, is a series of four warm, fantastical spaces run by the team behind pioneering New Orleans wine bar Bacchanal. Wine, coffee, and classic cocktails are predictably on point; the small-plate comfort food includes smoked gulf fish toast and red corn grits with poached egg.
Anything to say about the service?
The mostly local staff are uniformly friendly and excellent. And bonus points for the Hotel Peter and Paul map of the neighborhood, handily marked with the staff’s favorite local bars, restaurants, and shops.
What’s the neighborhood like?
The Marigny is a gentrified old Creole neighborhood, with its bright pastel cottages increasingly home to new NOLA creative types. The area is packed with great bars and coffee shops, and the legendary jazz clubs of Frenchmen Street are just a few blocks away.
Anything we missed?
Every corner of these old buildings has been thought about. The church, for example, has been turned into an events and community space, hosting everything from Vinyasa Flow yoga to flower-sharing and Contact Improv jams.
Is it worth it—why?
Yes. It’s beautifully done; theatrical escapism, but with due reverence for the history of the old buildings. Still, staying here does feel a bit naughty at times—in a good way.
2317 Burgundy St., New Orleans, Louisiana 70117
United States
https://hotelpeterandpaul.com/
(504) 356-5200