At 820 St. Louis Street, a few steps from the buzz of the French Quarter, the Hermann-Grima House opens its doors to a quieter, older New Orleans. Built in 1831 for merchant Samuel Hermann and designed by Virginian architect William Brand, it is one of the very few Federal-style houses in a city of Creole cottages and Spanish colonial facades, with exposed brick and an elegant fan-shaped transom over its door.
Inside, guided tours wander through parlors furnished as the Hermann and later Grima families knew them, then out to the working heart of the property: an original open-hearth kitchen where cooking demonstrations still happen, and a broad, sunlit courtyard shaded by citrus and banana trees. The museum’s acclaimed Urban Enslavement Tour, named by Conde Nast Traveler among the best tours in New Orleans, honors the lives and work of the enslaved people who ran this household.
The Hermann-Grima House is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. every day except Tuesday, and its carriage house holds The Exchange Shop, founded in 1881 by The Woman’s Exchange and one of the oldest women-led nonprofits in the South. Come for the architecture, stay for the courtyard calm.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
