PRICE:
Frommer's Highly Recommended

Built in the late 1800s as a boarding house for the World Cotton Exchange, this is an inn crossed with a B&B, which means a front desk staffed 24/7 and proper public areas. But it's far uptown, so if you can't live without Bourbon Street and bars mere steps from your hotel entrance, then this is not the place for you. The stunning location on St. Charles (with a streetcar stop right opposite, so it's easy to get to and fro the Quarter), with views right across to Audubon Park makes it well worth considering. Still, we wish they were more careful with their decor, a mix of antiques and sometimes truly bad modern furniture -- witness no. 19, a spacious room with a balcony, claw-foot tub, and fireplace with glazed tiles, and some godawful 1980s motel room furniture. If this sort of aesthetic mistake bothers you as much as it does us, you are better off with no. 9 (two antique wood beds, nice old fireplace, large balcony, new bathroom) or no. 17 (bigger bathroom, better furniture). Most of the rooms are spacious, and those downstairs, while just off the public areas, are grander still. New bathrooms mean only a few shared ones remain.

Copyright: Excerpted from Frommer's New Orleans 2009, (c) 2008, Wiley Publishing, Inc.

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