Hotel Saint Vincent

Hotel Saint Vincent opened in 2021 in a three-storey red brick building at the corner of Magazine and Race streets, in New Orleans' Lower Garden District. The building dates from 1861, when it was founded as Saint Vincent's Infant Asylum, an orphanage that also sheltered the elderly. Today it holds 75 rooms and carries a Michelin Key. The asylum was the work of Margaret Gaffney Haughery, an Irish-born baker known locally as "Our Margaret", who financed it with the profits of her bakery. A monument to her by the sculptor Alexander Doyle, dedicated in 1884, stands a short walk away in Margaret Place Park. For much of the century that followed, the building sat in poor repair under drop ceilings, though its structure stayed largely intact.

The place

The hotel is at 1507 Magazine Street, on the corner with Race Street. The Lower Garden District has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1972, and Magazine Street, the long commercial strip the hotel itself points guests toward for a stroll, runs along its front. The Haughery monument is close enough to reach on foot.

The concept

MML Hospitality, the Austin group formerly called McGuire Moorman Hospitality, made this its first project. Liz Lambert, previously of Bunkhouse Group, led the work, and Lambert McGuire Design handled the restoration and the interiors. The team added a new storey on top of the historic structure and organised the whole as three connected buildings around a courtyard with a Saltillo-tiled pool.

Lambert's stated ambition was something grand and a little debaucherous. The guest rooms use a palette of grey, salmon, red and gold, drawn from Italian modernism and Western European classical details.

The wallpaper carries the building's story. Designed with George Venson of Voutsa, it takes its marbled look from the bindings of Margaret Haughery's financial ledgers, and the pattern reappears on robes and headboards.

Dining & wellness

San Lorenzo is the all-day restaurant, named for the patron saint of cooks. The kitchen cooks coastal Italian food with Gulf seafood and New Orleans touches, with dishes such as a saffron risotto with Gulf shrimp. The main dining room has rope-and-medallion wainscoting, painted floors, murals and mohair couches, and a jazz lunch runs on Fridays from noon to 3pm.

Paradise Lounge, attached to it, has tall windows, bird of paradise murals, emerald velvet loveseats and mosaic floors inspired by the building's original ones.

Next to the main building, Elizabeth St. Café brings over a formula from Austin: French-Vietnamese café food and a bakery.

Chapel Club, open to guests only, occupies the former chapel, with stained glass and a monochrome marble bar over fuchsia velvet. A DJ plays there on Friday nights from 9pm, with no cover. A cabana bar serves the courtyard pool, and the lobby shop, ByGeorge, is a satellite of an Austin fashion and lifestyle store.