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Reported phenomena — as catalogued
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French Quarter hotel on a parcel once home to a Capuchin colonial school destroyed in the 1788 Good Friday fire; guests report children's laughter and an elderly apparition.
625 Saint Ann Street, New Orleans, LA 70116
Research updated May 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
$$$
Room rates vary seasonally; expect $180-$320 per night. Property includes eight renovated townhomes around a courtyard.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Modern hotel access; some historic rooms have stairs
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1969 · Eight renovated 19th-century French Quarter townhomes · Site narrative connects to 1788 Good Friday fire · Half-block from Jackson Square (colonial Place d'Armes)
The Place d'Armes Hotel occupies a parcel on St. Ann Street one block from Jackson Square (the colonial-era Place d'Armes from which the hotel takes its name). The hotel opened in 1969 and consists of eight renovated 18th- and 19th-century French Quarter townhomes arranged around a central courtyard, swimming pool, and fountain.
According to the hotel's own published history, the site of the present-day hotel was previously home to a Capuchin-order school - sometimes described in hotel marketing as the first school in French colonial Louisiana - founded by Father Raphael. The hotel narrative holds that this school was destroyed in the Great New Orleans Fire of 1788, with the headmaster and an unspecified number of students and teachers killed. Independent primary-source documentation of the school's specific location and its casualty count is limited; the documentation of the 1788 fire as a citywide event is unambiguous.
The Great New Orleans Fire of 1788 began at approximately 1:30 PM on Good Friday, March 21, 1788, at the home of Army Treasurer Don Vincente Jose Nunez at 619 Chartres Street - less than a block from the Place d'Armes Hotel's modern footprint. An accidentally overturned votive candle ignited curtains in Nunez's home; because the day was Good Friday, priests refused to allow church bells to be rung as a fire alarm. Within five hours, fed by a strong southeast wind, the fire had consumed approximately 856 of the city's 1,100 buildings, including the parochial church (later the cathedral), the presbytery, the government meeting house, the military barracks and arsenal, and the public jail. The Spanish colonial reconstruction that followed produced much of the masonry-and-courtyard architecture for which the French Quarter is famous today.
The 1811 German Coast Uprising, an enslaved-people revolt in the German Coast region upriver of New Orleans, ended with leaders executed and their heads placed on spikes along the Mississippi River between the Place d'Armes (Jackson Square) and the German Coast - one of the documented mass-punishment episodes connected to the parcel's broader neighborhood, though not to the present hotel building itself.
The Place d'Armes Hotel today is a member of the New Orleans French Quarter Hotel Group and is a regular fixture on French Quarter ghost-tour itineraries.
Sources
According to the hotel's published haunted-history materials and to multiple French Quarter ghost-tour aggregations (Haunted Places, WGNO local TV news), the hotel's paranormal lore is anchored to the 1788 Capuchin school narrative. The most-reported figures are children - said to be students of the colonial Capuchin school - and an elderly bearded man identified in hotel narrative as the school's headmaster.
Common guest reports include children's laughter, running footsteps, and splashing sounds heard from the courtyard and pool area when no children are present. Furniture is reported to move in unoccupied guest rooms. A young girl apparition has been reported approaching guests in hallways asking for her grandmother. The elderly bearded man in old-fashioned clothes is the most-reported single figure and is described as standing at the foot of guest beds before fading.
The identification of these figures with the alleged 1788 school is folkloric and rests on the hotel's published narrative. Primary archival documentation of the school's specific location, the headmaster's identity, and the casualty list is limited. The 1788 fire's destruction of the colonial city is well documented; the school-specific framing should be understood as community memory and as part of the hotel's brand narrative rather than as independently archived fact.
No specific named historical individual has been documented as a paranormal subject at the property; the headmaster and children are referenced as figures without verified names. This entry treats the 1788 fire and the broader Spanish-colonial-reconstruction history as documented context and treats the school-specific identifications as folklore.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
Stay at the Place d'Armes Hotel in the heart of the French Quarter, steps from Jackson Square. The hotel acknowledges its haunted reputation in marketing materials and is a regular stop on French Quarter ghost tours.
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 Hotel Villa Convento at 616 Ursulines Avenue is a Creole townhouse built in or around 1833 on land sold off by the Ursuline nuns. Its first owner was Jean Baptiste Poeyfarre. The building later served as a residence and a rooming house. The Campo family acquired the property in September 1981 and operates it as a small family-run guest house. Local lore identifies the building as the original 'House of the Rising Sun' of the Animals' 1964 song, though no archival evidence definitively links the song to this property.