Creole Restaurant with the Reserved Table for Pierre Antoine Lepardi Jourdan
801 Chartres Street, New Orleans, LA 70116
Age
All Ages
Cost
$$$
Creole fine dining at French Quarter rates. Brunch, dinner, and a la carte bar service in the upstairs Seance Lounge.
Access
Limited Access
Stairs to upstairs lounges; ground-floor dining accessible
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1788 · Jackson Square Property Since 1718 · Post-1788 Fire Rebuilding · Pierre Jourdan Suicide Site
The property at 801 Chartres Street faces Jackson Square in the heart of the French Quarter. The lot was originally awarded to Claude Trepagnier, a French-Canadian who had assisted Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville in the founding of New Orleans in 1718. Trepagnier built a small cottage on the site, which gained value as Jackson Square — then the Place d'Armes — developed as the colonial center.
Jean-Baptiste Destrehan, royal treasurer of the French Louisiana colonies, later acquired the property and built an elaborate Creole townhouse. In 1776 Don Pierre Phillipe de Marigny, a wealthy Spanish-colonial-era landowner whose family later gave its name to the Faubourg Marigny neighborhood, purchased the property and used it as a town house.
The Great New Orleans Fire of March 21, 1788, destroyed over 850 buildings in the French Quarter, including a substantial portion of the structure on Chartres Street. The property was acquired by Pierre Antoine Lepardi Jourdan, who undertook the rebuilding of the house in the late 1780s and early 1790s. In 1814, according to durable New Orleans tradition, Jourdan wagered the house in a poker game and lost. Rather than surrender the property he had spent years rebuilding, he died by suicide on the second floor.
The building passed through subsequent ownership through the 19th and 20th centuries. By the late 20th century it operated as a French Quarter rental property. Restaurateur Stephen Pettus opened Muriel's Jackson Square in March 2001 in the restored building. The restaurant takes its name from Muriel, a friend of Pettus's, and styles its menu as elevated Creole.
Muriel's interiors include a ground-floor dining room, an upstairs courtyard view dining room, and two small upstairs lounges branded as the Seance Lounges. The architecture is broadly Creole townhouse with French Quarter wrought-iron balconies and an interior courtyard.
Sources
Muriel's Jackson Square is one of the relatively few American restaurants that explicitly incorporates its ghost story into its operational identity. The restaurant's own About section maintains a detailed account of Pierre Antoine Lepardi Jourdan, the late-18th-century rebuilder of the post-1788-fire structure, who lost the house in an 1814 poker game and died by suicide on the second floor.
When Muriel's opened in March 2001, restaurant staff reported objects moving and glassware breaking in the upstairs spaces. Restaurateur Stephen Pettus consulted a medium who reported that Jourdan was upset at not being invited to dinner in his own former home. The restaurant began reserving a table for Jourdan on the second floor, set each evening with a fresh loaf of French bread and a glass of red wine.
The two upstairs lounges have been named the Seance Lounges in reference to the property's reputation. Visitors describe occasional cold spots near the reserved table, the sense of being watched in the lounges, and on rare occasions the brief observation of a figure in late-18th-century dress.
Other figures reported at the property include a brick-layer figure observed in the courtyard, sometimes interpreted as a workman who died during the post-1788-fire rebuilding, and a woman in white seen on the second-floor stairs. Documentary anchor for these secondary figures is thin and the accounts circulate primarily through Ghost City Tours and other New Orleans tour operators.
Muriel's treats its ghost openly and warmly. The restaurant's marketing presents Jourdan as a member of the establishment rather than as a fear element, fitting New Orleans's broader Creole tradition of cohabitation with the deceased.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
A full-service Creole dinner in a French Quarter townhouse on Jackson Square, with the option to be seated near the reserved table on the second floor that the restaurant maintains for Pierre Antoine Lepardi Jourdan, the property's most famous resident ghost. The Seance Lounges upstairs are accessible to dinner guests.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
New Orleans, LA
Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop at 941 Bourbon Street in New Orleans is a French Colonial townhouse built between 1772 and 1791. The briquette-entre-poteaux structure is one of the oldest surviving buildings in the French Quarter and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1970. It has operated as a bar since the 1940s.
New Orleans, LA
The Old Absinthe House occupies a corner building at 240 Bourbon Street in the French Quarter of New Orleans. The structure was built in 1806 as a commission house and corner grocery; the ground floor was converted to a saloon in 1815, and the famous Absinthe House Frappe was created behind the bar in 1874 by mixologist Cayetano Ferrer.
Casa Grande, AZ
Cafe de Manuel's operates as an authentic Mexican restaurant in Casa Grande, Arizona, established in 1995. The building formerly functioned as a furniture store and private residential property prior to restaurant use. The structure harbors historical trauma from its commercial and residential operations.