Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop - A Legend in Brick and Timber

Photo: Infrogmation of New Orleans, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)

A stop on New Orleans French Quarter Walk, a free self-guided tour.

Look at this small, slightly leaning cottage on the corner of Bourbon and St. Philip streets. Where the plaster has worn away, you can see the bones of the building: a timber frame filled in with soft brick. The French called this briquette entre poteaux, brick between posts. It dates to the late 1700s and is one of the rare buildings in the Quarter to show this old French colonial method so plainly.

The name comes from a legend. The story goes that the brothers Jean and Pierre Lafitte, privateers and smugglers who fought on the American side at the Battle of New Orleans, used a blacksmith shop here as a front for selling captured goods. No document proves the Lafittes ever owned it, so enjoy the tale as a legend.

The building became a National Historic Landmark in 1970 for its architecture. Today it is a bar, so families can enjoy it best from the sidewalk.

Getting here: Leave the park at Rampart Street, walk downriver two blocks to St. Philip Street, and follow St. Philip toward the river to the Bourbon Street corner.

Did you know?: The building sat abandoned for years before the 1940s, when it reopened as a cafe that drew writers and artists, including the playwright Tennessee Williams.

Photo op: Stand on the opposite corner of St. Philip Street to catch the sagging roofline and the patches where the brick and timber show through.

More on Wikipedia: Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop · Jean Lafitte · Battle of New Orleans

Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop - A Legend in Brick and Timber

Stops on this tour