The Carousel Bar at Hotel Monteleone

The Carousel Bar at Hotel Monteleone

French Quarter , New Orleans

See that building taking up half the block on Royal Street? That's the Hotel Monteleone.

See that building taking up half the block on Royal Street? That's the Hotel Monteleone. It's the only high-rise in the interior French Quarter, and the man who built it repaired shoes for a living.

Antonio Monteleone arrived from Sicily around eighteen eighty and set up a cobbler's shop on this street. He started buying property — a lot here, a building there. By eighteen eighty-six, he had a sixty-four-room hotel. Rooms cost a dollar a night. He kept acquiring the buildings around it and absorbing them. By nineteen oh-eight, it was two hundred and twenty rooms with private baths, electric lights, and fireproofing. That last part mattered — just about every other hotel in New Orleans had burned down at some point.

Today, five generations later, the Monteleone family still runs it. Five hundred and seventy rooms. Antonio kept his cobbler's bench in a storage room behind the lobby for the rest of his life. His son Frank tried to move it out once. Antonio had it brought back the next d

ay.

Go inside. You're here for the Carousel Bar.

It's exactly what it sounds like — a circular bar with twenty-five stools that slowly revolves around stationary bartenders in the middle. The whole thing has been spinning since nineteen forty-nine on two thousand large steel rollers. One bicycle chain. One motor with a quarter horsepower — less than a kitchen blender. It's been turning those bar

Hear the full story

Hear this story with audio narration in the Bad Historian app.

Get the Free App

Quick Facts

  • Antonio Monteleone: Sicilian cobbler who arrived c. 1880, built 64-room hotel by 1886, expanded to 220 rooms by 1908
  • Monteleone family still runs the hotel — five generations
  • Carousel Bar: 25 stools spinning on 2,000 large steel rollers, one bicycle chain, quarter-HP motor since 1949
  • Truman Capote claimed he was born at the Monteleone; actually born at Touro Infirmary
  • Tennessee Williams drank Brandy Alexanders at the Carousel Bar for character inspiration
  • Hotel Monteleone is one of three hotels designated a National Literary Landmark (1999)
  • Vieux Carre cocktail invented at Hotel Monteleone in 1938 by bartender Walter Bergeron; ingredients represent French Quarter cultures
Featured Tour

Cocktails, Craps & the Invention of Fun

Several stops • 1h 30m

View Tour

Location