Completed 1752, the oldest surviving building in the Mississippi Valley and home of the famous Casket Girls vampire folklore tied to its sealed third-floor dormer windows.
1100 Chartres Street, New Orleans, LA 70116
Age
All Ages
Cost
$
Adult admission approximately $8-$10; check museum website for current rates.
Access
Limited Access
Mid-18th-century building with stairs to upper floors; ground floor partially accessible
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1752 · Oldest surviving building in the Mississippi River Valley (1752) · Oldest surviving example of French colonial architecture in the US · Continuous Ursuline foundation since 1727 · Original site of New Orleans' first hospital, orphanage, and girls' school · National Register of Historic Places
The Ursuline Sisters of New Orleans arrived in the French colonial city in 1727 - just nine years after the city's founding - aboard the ship La Gironde. They took up residence in a smaller earlier convent building before construction began on the present brick-and-stucco French colonial building. The current convent was completed in 1752 and is the oldest documented surviving building in the entire Mississippi River Valley.
During the French and Spanish colonial periods, the Ursulines ran the city's principal hospital, an orphanage for the daughters of French colonists killed in conflict or by epidemic disease, a school for girls (including for free women of color and for some enslaved girls), and a refuge for women in distress. The Ursulines' New Orleans presence is one of the oldest continuous Catholic women's-religious foundations in what is now the United States.
Around 1820 the Ursuline community relocated to a larger property elsewhere in the city. The 1752 building became the archbishop's residence for decades and was later adapted as the Catholic Cultural Center. The walled gardens on the property are themselves significant - one of the oldest formal garden plots in continuous documented use in the city.
The building is operated today as the Old Ursuline Convent Museum and the adjacent St. Mary's Church is an active parish. The convent is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is one of the most visited French Quarter heritage properties.
The historical context for the famous 'Casket Girls' legend lies in the 1720s and 1730s arrivals of young women from France - known in French as filles a la cassette ('girls with cassettes' or small chests of belongings) - who were sent by the French Crown to marry colonists. The Ursulines housed and chaperoned them. There is no contemporary 18th-century evidence connecting these arrivals to vampires; historians have repeatedly noted that the vampire reading of the legend appears to be a late-20th-century overlay possibly influenced by Anne Rice's New Orleans-set vampire novels.
Sources
The 'Casket Girls' folklore is one of New Orleans' most enduring urban legends. Filles a la cassette - 'girls with cassettes' or small wooden chests of belongings - were young French women sent by the French Crown in 1728 and the early 1730s to marry colonists in Louisiana. Historians (nola.com; Ghost City Tours: The Truth about the Casket Girls; Fodor's) generally describe them as either orphans or marriageable-age young women from modest French homes. The Ursulines housed and chaperoned them on arrival.
The legend transforms this documentary record into a horror narrative. In the folkloric version, the young women arrived pale, gaunt, and sickly from the long sea voyage; their cassettes were said to contain not linen and trousseaux but vampires; and the Ursulines were forced to seal the cassettes (and the vampires) in the third-floor attic. The third-floor dormer windows of the 1752 convent - which are kept permanently closed and shuttered - are pointed to as the proof of the sealing, said to have been nailed shut with 800 silver nails blessed by the Pope.
Researchers including the writers at nola.com and Ghost City Tours have repeatedly noted that no 18th- or 19th-century document records the vampire reading; the earliest documented written versions appear in the late 20th century, and Anne Rice's New Orleans-set Vampire Chronicles (beginning with Interview with the Vampire, 1976) are often cited as a possible influence on the modern oral tradition.
Despite the clearly modern origin of the vampire framing, the legend has cultural momentum. Tour groups gather at the corner of Chartres and Ursulines Avenue after dark to view the sealed dormers, and several French Quarter walking-tour operators include the convent on standard itineraries. Visitors have reported feelings of being watched while standing near the corner, and a small number have reported hearing distant women's voices from above. These reports should be read as community folklore attached to a documented historic building rather than as documented sightings.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
Self-guided visit to the oldest surviving building in the Mississippi Valley. Exhibits cover French colonial Catholic history, the Ursuline nuns' founding role in education and orphan care in 18th-century New Orleans, the convent garden, and the famous sealed third-floor dormer windows attached to the Casket Girls folklore.
Tour groups regularly gather on Chartres Street and Ursulines Avenue to view the building's distinctive third-floor dormer windows, which are anchored to the Casket Girls vampire folklore. Multiple French Quarter ghost-tour operators stop at the corner after dark.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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