New Orleans's Newest Hotel Designed by ASH NYC Is Travel-Worthy

Hannah Martin
Updated

Five years ago in New Orleans, Will Cooper, Ari Heckman, and Jonathan Minkoff of the firm ASH NYC found themselves smitten. On the search for their next hotel location, the Brooklyn-based designers were brought by their local partner Nathalie Jordi to a vacant 1860s church complex in the Marigny, designed in part by architect Henry Howard, complete with rectory, schoolhouse, and convent. As they took in the property’s swooping cypress staircases, gingerbread façade, and gilded altars, they knew this was it, the perfect site and the perfect neighborhood—bohemian, mostly residential, without a competing hotel. “We’d do whatever it takes,” Cooper remembers thinking.

The 1860s schoolhouse exterior serves as the entrance to Hôtel Peter & Paul.
The 1860s schoolhouse exterior serves as the entrance to Hôtel Peter & Paul.

What it took was some 12 months to rezone the property for commercial use, years of mood-boarding, and several buying trips to Europe, during just one of which they scored some 770 antiques for the project. “We wanted it to be very ‘done,’” Cooper says. “We wanted proper decoration.” Today, those finds fill the halls of Hôtel Peter & Paul, where guests enter through the schoolhouse to reach the 71 rooms—many of them furnished with custom gingham fabrics and hand-painted credenzas that riff on the trompe l’oeil walls at L’Institut Guerlain in Paris. The rich, monochromatic color palettes that distinguish each floor of the schoolhouse, meanwhile, were lifted from the Greek and Russian religious icons that punctuate the property. As for the rectory, convent, and church, thanks to a thoughtful restoration in conjunction with NOLA’s studioWTA, those structures now boast retail, event spaces, and dining courtesy of New Orleans hotspot Bacchanal.

Two cypress staircases in the Peter & Paul schoolhouse lobby.
Two cypress staircases in the Peter & Paul schoolhouse lobby.

Like ASH’s other hotel projects—the Dean Hotel in Providence, the Siren Hotel in Detroit—there is ample charm to be found in the details, from paintings purchased at local estate sales to antique altar candlesticks retrofitted as table lamps. Says Heckman, “We’re creating a fantasy for people, a total escape.” Rooms from $99; hotelpeterandpaul.com

ASH devised a trellised surround for the Elysian Bar, an outpost of hot NOLA wine bar and restaurant Bacchanal.
ASH devised a trellised surround for the Elysian Bar, an outpost of hot NOLA wine bar and restaurant Bacchanal.
The rich color palettes of the guest rooms were drawn from the Greek and Russian religious icon paintings sprinkled throughout the hotel.
The rich color palettes of the guest rooms were drawn from the Greek and Russian religious icon paintings sprinkled throughout the hotel.

RELATED: A Modern Tribeca Apartment Where Eclecticism Reigns

See the videos.