Storied ground for the sacred and profane
The Ursuline Convent has a long and twisted history. The story begins in 1726, when King Louis XV sent nuns from Rouen to the colony to establish a hospital for the poor and a school for young girls. Fourteen sisters made the trip and performed their work from several temporary or inadequate locations before the convent was completed in 1752, making it the oldest surviving building in the Mississippi River Valley.
Ursuline is also the longest running all-girls school and the oldest Catholic school in America; it was also the first to teach slaves, Creoles, and Native Americans. For some years in the 1800s, it was the official residence of the city’s archbishops and the unofficial home of vampires.
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Address 1100 Chartres Street, New Orleans, LA 70116, +1 504.529.3040 | Hours Mon–Sat 10am–4pm| Tip The chapel next door, at 1116 Chartres, has had a variety of names. It was originally called Sainte Marie de l’Archeveche and later Holy Trinity, then became St. Mary’s Italian Church. In 1976, the name was changed for the last time to Our Lady of Victory. Inside the church is the original Pilcher organ, built in 1890, and an unusual stained-glass window that features Andrew Jackson.
The story goes that a group of young girls were sent over from France to provide proper wives for the male French settlers. Upon arrival by ship, each with her entire belongings in a single coffin-shaped suitcase, they were housed at the Ursuline Convent. Collectively, they were called filles à la cassette (“girls with a cassette”), which was shortened to “casket girls.” When some cases were found to be empty, hyper-imaginative residents thought the casket girls were smuggling vampires into New Orleans. Legend has it that the convent’s third-story dormer windows are allegedly sealed with bolts blessed by the Pope in order to contain the undead in the attic.
The convent holds numerous points of interest. Right inside the front entrance is the original cypress staircase, carved from a single piece of wood, and a grandfather clock that the nuns brought with them from France in 1727. The main building is filled with dozens of oil paintings, religious statues, and bronze busts. Out back is a walled courtyard with life-sized statues of praying nuns, including Henriette Delille (see p. 174), a New Orleans Creole who founded the first-ever order comprising free women of color.
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