Hermann-Grima House

The Hermann-Grima House guide in New Orleans opens with a puzzle: why did Samuel Hermann, a German immigrant who built a fortune brokering cotton, credit, and land, lose the mansion he built to announce his arrival within thirteen years of finishing it. You'll hear how he hired Virginia builder William Brand in 1831 to raise this Saint Louis Street house with its wide central hall and street-facing doorway, and how the 1837 collapse of England's cotton market rippled through fortunes like his. The tour also leads into the courtyard behind you, where the open-hearth kitchen, the only one of its kind left in the French Quarter, was once worked by enslaved cooks. Stand at the hearth and picture the household still running above them.