The Roosevelt New Orleans

Every December the long lobby of the Roosevelt, which runs a full block from Baronne Street through to Roosevelt Way, is hung with white lights and birch branches, and locals come in to look as often as guests. The hotel has been at the centre of New Orleans social life since 1893, when it opened under another name, and it is now part of Waldorf Astoria.

History

Louis Grunewald, a German immigrant who had made his money in the music trade, opened the Hotel Grunewald in 1893. A much larger annex added in 1908 became the main building. Its basement held The Cave, a nightclub decorated with artificial stalactites and waterfalls, often described as one of the first nightclubs in the country. In 1923 the hotel took the name of Theodore Roosevelt, who had died four years before. Seymour Weiss, who had started at the hotel running its barber shop, rose to manage and then own it, and over several decades he made it the city's meeting place. In the 1930s the hotel acquired the rights to the name of the Ramos Gin Fizz, the drink created by the bartender Henry Ramos. The Fairmont group bought the building in 1965 and renamed it The Fairmont New Orleans. Hurricane Katrina closed the hotel in 2005. After a long restoration it reopened in 2009 under its old name, as a Waldorf Astoria.

Architecture and design

The building is a large Beaux-Arts block in the Central Business District, and its lobby is its great room: gilded columns, marble floors, mosaics and crystal chandeliers in a long sequence. The 2009 restoration brought back the gilt and the marble and reopened the historic public rooms along the ground floor, among them the Sazerac Bar and the Blue Room. The Christmas display, with its tunnel of lights along the whole length of the lobby, has become the hotel's best-known image.

Rooms and suites

There are several hundred rooms and suites, which makes the Roosevelt one of the larger historic hotels in the city. Rooms are traditional in style, and suites on the upper floors have views across the business district and towards the French Quarter and the river.

Dining

The Sazerac Bar is the most famous room in the house. Its long walnut bar and the murals of New Orleans life painted by Paul Ninas set the tone, and it serves the Sazerac, the city's own cocktail, and the Ramos Gin Fizz, a frothy mix of gin, citrus, cream, egg white and orange flower water that needs long shaking. The bar served only men until 1949, when women walked in and took their places at the counter, a day the city still calls the storming of the Sazerac. The Blue Room, the hotel's supper club, presented big bands and headline singers for decades and is now used for events and special occasions.

Wellness

The Waldorf Astoria Spa occupies part of the hotel, and a rooftop pool with a bar looks out over the city.

Weddings and events

Events have always been a large part of the hotel's life. The Blue Room and the ballrooms host wedding receptions, galas and Carnival season parties, and there are meeting rooms for conferences and board dinners.

Location

The hotel stands a block from Canal Street on the edge of the Central Business District, and the French Quarter begins on the far side of Canal. The St. Charles streetcar runs a block away, out through the Garden District to Uptown. Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport is about half an hour away by car, and the Union Passenger Terminal, the city's rail station, is a short taxi ride. It is one of the few luxury hotels in New Orleans with more than a century of history behind it, and its bar is one of the places where the city's drinking history was made.