How This New Orleans Hotel Went From Former Haunted House to Chic Destination

The Greek Revival mansion that sits at the corner of Prytania Street and Jackson Avenue in New Orleans’s Garden District wouldn’t know “dull” if it came up and rang the doorbell. The 1857 building’s first owner was a cotton merchant who died of yellow fever. Another owner was fatally struck by lightning. Fast-forward to the 21st century, when a Tina Turner impersonator bought the property and turned it into Magnolia Mansion, a B&B with suites with names like Vampire Lovers’ Lair and Moulin Rouge. Later, a former professional boxer and a local politics kingmaker took over, but things fell apart around the time of the FBI’s raid on the property.Oh, and the estate is said to be haunted.The Whit’s moody mahogany-paneled library Frank Frances StudioThe hotel’s parlor Frank Frances StudioNamed in its B&B era by USA Today as one of the top places in the nation “to sleep with a ghost,” the magisterial Harris-Maginnis House earned a spot on the city’s ghost-tour circuit with an ever-mounting pile of lore. According to a spooky tour-operator website, guests at the B&B reported various eerie happenings over the years, such as the sensation of somebody tucking them in at night or a presence watching them while they slept. There were also rumblings of mysterious footsteps and slamming doors. Ghosts or no ghosts, the new team taking over the place found gothic-coded wall murals and dark purple velvet hanging at every turn.Who you gonna call to give an old haunt a new design vernacular? Gretchen Trauth, CEO of the New Orleans investment firm behind the New Orleans hotel, rang up Jensen Killen and Katie Logan Leblanc of Logan Killen, a local design firm known for infusing spaces with a beguiling mix of polish and patina. “The goal was a hotel where nobody can quite tell whether a designer has touched it,” says Leblanc.Breakfast room with Pierre Frey wallpaper Frank Frances Studio“We wanted it to feel very storied, like it’s been someone’s house for a long time,” adds Killen. “There are these layered histories imbued in the furnishings and the art and accessories.”The Whit, named for poet Walt Whitman, who spent three months in New Orleans around the time of the home’s construction, has been reimagined by the designers with a romantic, lived-in, and curio-studded aesthetic that tempts guests to sit down and stay awhile. Architect Seamus McGuire of New Orleans firm Cicada helped navigate historical codes and redraw the map to capture some of the glamour that had drained away in recent years. His blueprint called for converting a trio of bedrooms into lounges. A mahogany-paneled library is now a gallery of antique dog portraits and a repository of volumes from local independent Faulkner House Books. “It’s dark and moody and where you might want to have a cocktail or a whiskey,” Leblanc says of the clubby room. Bookworms might also gravitate to the sunroom’s banquette seating, one of the wicker chairs on the wraparound porch, or the breakfast room, a delightfully matchy-matchy enclave covered in Pierre Frey Les Colonnes wallpaper and curtains.The Whit’s porch Frank Frances StudioThe hardest room to get right, say the designers, was the main lounge. “It’s a giant space that isn’t always in use, and can be tricky to give life to when it’s empty,” says Killen. Intended to serve as a great room by day and an atmospheric cocktail bar come evening, the team layered in elements such as blue paint that reads ethereal by day and warm by night, a custom grid carpet to add a sense of tailoring to the expansive area, and an intimate salon-style wall of works by Louisiana artists, including Robert Moreland and Mallory Page.Another tightrope walk was the second-floor bar. Landmark rules forbid faking a history that a space never had, so the team went openly Deco instead. “What we don’t want is to put a contemporary bar into a very historic property,” says McGuire. “You can’t give a false sense of history to a space.”One of the hotel’s 15 guest rooms Frank Frances StudioIt will probably come as little surprise that the bedrooms resist uniformity. In addition to the classically designed units, a quartet of cozy garden rooms have low ceilings and glossy oxblood walls; three cabana rooms feel airy, with bamboo beds and high ceilings. “It’s not meant to feel like everything was changed by the same person at the same time,” Killen says of the narrative that the designers have introduced to the New Orleans hotel.As for the supposed ghosts, nobody’s heard boo.