HauntBound archive · catalog record
Reported phenomena — as catalogued
1833 Creole townhouse on land sold by the Ursuline nuns; family-run guest house rumored to be the original 'House of the Rising Sun.'
616 Ursulines Avenue, New Orleans, LA 70116
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages (guest rooms 18+ to book)
Cost
$$
Small family-run guest house; rates typically $150-$225 per night depending on season.
Access
Limited Access
1830s Creole townhouse with stairs to upper floors; no elevator
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1833 · 1833 Creole townhouse · Built on land sold off by the Ursuline nuns · Family-owned guest house since 1981 · Disputed candidate for the original 'House of the Rising Sun' · Former home of Jimmy Buffett (1970s)
The lot at 616 Ursulines Avenue is part of the original French Quarter grid laid out by Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville in 1721. In the early 19th century, the Ursuline nuns - whose convent stood across the street - began selling off their land holdings. The Villa Convento parcel was sold around 1830 to Jean Baptiste Poeyfarre, who commissioned a Creole townhouse on the property completed in or around 1833.
Poeyfarre's widow sold the building in approximately 1843 to Octave Voorheis, who later lost the property in the depression following the Civil War (approximately 1872). The building changed hands several times during the late 19th and early 20th centuries and served various residential purposes.
Local lore and tour-operator narratives identify the building as the 'House of the Rising Sun' immortalized in the Animals' 1964 hit recording of the traditional folk song. The Villa Convento itself notes the connection in its marketing materials. Music historians have offered competing identifications for the historical 'House of the Rising Sun' (other candidates include several specific Storyville bordellos and an early-20th-century rooming house elsewhere in the French Quarter), and no archival proof has definitively settled the question. The connection should be understood as one of several competing claims.
The Campo family - Italian-American immigrants to New Orleans - acquired the building in September 1981 and converted it into the Hotel Villa Convento small family-run guest house. The hotel has been continuously operated by the Campo family since that date. Singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett, who lived in the building before its conversion in the 1970s, returned years later with a documentary crew to film at his former apartment (room 305).
Sources
According to French Quarter ghost-tour and guesthouse-history aggregations (Ghost City Tours, US Ghost Adventures, Unique NOLA Tours), the Villa Convento is reputed to have served at some point in the 19th or early 20th century as an unlicensed bordello operating from the building's upper floors. No specific name or date has been documented for this period, and the bordello identification rests largely on the same lore that ties the building to 'House of the Rising Sun.' Local lore identifies the haunting subject as 'the Madame.'
The most-reported rooms among ghost-tour aggregations are rooms 301, 302, and 209. Guest reports collected by the hotel and by ghost-tour operators include disembodied voices and conversations heard with no visible source, unexplained knocking on walls or doors, small personal items disappearing and reappearing, and a strong sensation of being watched - particularly in the third-floor rooms.
No named historical individual has been documented as a paranormal subject at the property. The lore at Hotel Villa Convento is comparatively thin in named-individual content and rich in atmospheric reports. This entry treats the architectural and ownership history as primary and treats the 'Madame' identification as folkloric.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
Small family-run guest house in an 1833 Creole townhouse. Most haunted rooms reported by ghost-tour aggregators are 301, 302, and 209. The Campo family has owned and operated the property since 1981 and discusses the building's reputation openly.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
New Orleans, LA
The Dauphine Orleans Hotel opened in 1969 as a French Quarter boutique hotel built around several existing historic buildings on Dauphine Street, the most notable of which is the former site of May Baily's Place - the first officially licensed bordello in New Orleans, which opened in 1857 under the city's 'Ordinance Concerning Lewd and Abandoned Women.' The original 1857 city license is displayed inside the hotel. The Audubon Cottage on the property is reputed to be a former workspace of naturalist John James Audubon.
New Orleans, LA
Hotel Provincial opened in 1961 in a complex of historic French Quarter buildings on Chartres Street. The complex includes Building 5, which served as a Confederate military hospital during the Civil War, treating wounded soldiers brought back from regional battles. Original buildings on the property were lost to fires in 1874 and 1878 and were rebuilt; current structures incorporate surviving 19th-century walls. The hotel remains family-owned and operates as a boutique property in the French Quarter.
New Orleans, LA
The Place d'Armes Hotel opened in 1969 on a French Quarter parcel a half-block from Jackson Square, occupying eight renovated 19th-century townhomes built around a central courtyard with a pool. Hotel materials state that the site was previously home to a Capuchin school - sometimes called the first school in French colonial Louisiana - that was destroyed in the 1788 Good Friday fire. The colonial school connection rests primarily on the hotel's own published history; the broader fire of March 21, 1788 is documented to have destroyed 856 of the city's 1,100 buildings.