HauntBound archive · catalog record
Reported phenomena, as catalogued
1845 Lower French Quarter Hotel on Chartres Street
1234 Chartres Street, New Orleans, LA 70116
Research updated May 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
$$$
Mid-range French Quarter hotel rates vary seasonally; check the property website for current room availability.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Historic French Quarter hotel with courtyard and multi-floor configuration.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1845 · French Quarter Vieux Carré Historic District · Mid-nineteenth-century townhouse architecture · Site of Paul McCartney / Wings 1975-1976 New Orleans residency
Hotel Le Richelieu was assembled from a row of townhouses constructed in the 1840s and 1850s in the lower French Quarter of New Orleans, near the boundary with the Faubourg Marigny. The block of Chartres Street at 1234 sits within the historic Quarter laid out in 1721 by the French colonial engineer Adrien de Pauger; the immediate area was developed substantially after the 1788 and 1794 fires that destroyed most of the original Spanish-colonial-period wooden Quarter and were followed by the surviving brick-and-stucco rebuilding.
The townhouses comprising the present hotel were converted to a unified hotel operation in the 1960s. Hotel Le Richelieu's most documented twentieth-century chapter is the 1975-1976 extended stay of Paul McCartney and the band Wings during their recording sessions at Sea-Saint Studios in the Gentilly neighborhood; the album Venus and Mars was substantially produced during this period, and Wings members occupied the hotel for several weeks.
The property has operated continuously as a mid-range French Quarter hotel since that period, distinguishing itself from the higher-priced upper Quarter hotels through its lower-Quarter location and quieter neighborhood character. The building retains substantial original mid-nineteenth-century interior fabric, including ironwork balconies and brick courtyard walls characteristic of the Quarter's surviving antebellum residential architecture.
Sources
The folklore attached to the 1234 Chartres Street block describes the property as having served as an execution ground during the November 1803 retrocession of Louisiana from Spain to France, which preceded the Louisiana Purchase transfer to the United States a few weeks later. Specific oral-tradition retellings describe Spanish soldiers executed for treason on this site by French colonial authorities. The Shadowlands compendium that fed this entry asserts that the events occurred in 1802 when France took Louisiana back from Spain.
This claim is part of the French Quarter ghost-tour oral tradition and is not corroborated by primary records held in the Louisiana State Archives or the Historic New Orleans Collection. The retrocession period was brief (Spain to France in November 1803, France to United States in December 1803), and documented executions of Spanish soldiers on this specific Chartres Street block do not appear in published archival summaries. The folklore is presented here as oral tradition that has accreted around the lower-Quarter blocks rather than as an established historical event.
Reported phenomena at the hotel across its modern operating decades have been comparatively restrained — atmospheric reports of footsteps in upper-floor corridors and unexplained chill in the courtyard area at night. The property is one of many French Quarter hotels included in commercial ghost-tour routes; visitors interested in the broader Quarter ghost-tour tradition will find substantial commercial offerings, with varying levels of historical rigor.
Book a room at Hotel Le Richelieu, a lower French Quarter hotel assembled from a row of mid-nineteenth-century townhouses on Chartres Street. The property is known among long-term French Quarter regulars as the hotel where Paul McCartney stayed for an extended period in 1975-1976 while recording with Wings at Sea-Saint Studios.
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