Beauregard-Keyes House-1113 Chartres Street
This amazing home was built in 1826 by Joseph Le Carpentier, a newly wealthy merchant who’d earned his money through questionable ventures with pirate Jean Lafitte. The Ursuline nuns originally owned the property, which sits directly across from their convent, but when the city decided progress meant continuing Chartres street through their property, the land was broken up into parcels and sold off.
The first of the house’s famous occupants was Confederate general Pierre G. T. Beauregard, who actually lived in the house twice- first in 1860, honeymooning with his bride Caroline, and then after the Civil War. His second stay lasted 18 months as he recovered from the war and mourned his beloved Caroline, who’d died while he was fighting.
80 years later, author Frances P. Keyes purchased the house from the Louisiana Landmark Society and sunk her considerable fortune into restoration. She wintered in the house, continuing to write until her death, when it was turned into a museum to show off the house and showcase Keyes’ extensive doll and teapot collections.
The single most notable event in the house, however, involved neither famous occupant, but the Giaconias, a family of wine merchants who bought the house in 1909. At the time, the mafia was firmly in control of all things Italian in New Orleans, but the Giaconias refused to pony up and pay protection money.
After the mafia shot up the front of the house as a warning, the family decided to take things into their own hands, inviting some of the bigwigs to dinner and ‘discussion’ of the matter. Four mobsters showed up, three were killed, the fourth badly wounded, all in various locations around the house, including over the driveway.
The house fell into disrepair after the Giaconias moved away, and when a permit was filed to demolish the house in 1925 and build a macaroni factory in its place the preservation movement was born in the New Orleans. Locals organized to form what would eventually become the Louisiana Landmark Society that began to try to save and restore significant properties in the city.
Similar Posts:
- Bradish Johnson House- 1823 Prytania
- St Louis Cathedral, Pt II
- Myrtles Plantation
- Country Cajun Cemetery
- Rosegate, 1239 First Street, Garden District
