You're on Bourbon Street. Before we go any further — this street is named for the French royal House of Bourbon. The dynasty, not the whiskey. It was laid out in seventeen twenty-two by a French engineer named Adrien de Pauger. Bourbon whiskey didn't exist for another sixty years. Pauger named the streets to flatter the monarchy — Bourbon, Royal, Dauphine, Orleans. He was kissing up to his boss using a street grid.
Pauger died four years later and is believed to be buried under Saint Louis Cathedral. The man who drew this neighborhood is somewhere underneath it.
Now — the building at two forty Bourbon. That's the Old Absinthe House. Built in seventeen ninety-eight by two Spaniards as a grocery and import shop. It became a bar in eighteen thirty-five and started serving absinthe around eighteen sixty-nine.
In eighteen seventy-four, a bartender named Cayetano Ferrer invented the Absinthe Frappe here — the drink that made this place famous. He eventually renamed the entire bar after it
. Inside, you can still see the original green marble and bronze absinthe fountains. Water dripped slowly through a sugar cube on a slotted spoon into the emerald absinthe below, turning it a milky opalescent white. They called that reaction the louche.
In nineteen twelve, the federal government banned absinthe — said it was dangerous because of the wormwood. The Old Absinthe House reportedly res
