Four buildings occupy the block at Burgundy and Mandeville streets in the Marigny, and every one of them spent over a century serving God before they started serving hotel guests. Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church opened in 1860 to handle the neighborhood’s English-speaking Catholics, most of them Irish immigrants who needed somewhere to pray that wasn’t in French. A rectory went up around 1875, a convent in 1890, and a schoolhouse in 1900. For the next hundred years, priests said Mass, nuns taught children, and the whole operation hummed along until suburbs pulled the congregation away and the buildings went dark.
The church closed in 2001. The school had already shut down in 1993. By the time developer Nathalie Jordi walked through the property in the early 2010s, vines were growing through windows, and the place looked ready for demolition. She saw something else.
Hotel Peter and Paul opened in late 2018 after a four-year, $20 million restoration that kept the bones of all four buildings and turned classrooms, bedrooms, and prayer rooms into 71 hotel rooms spread across the campus. No two rooms look identical. The design firm ASH NYC worked with local architects from studioWTA to preserve original cypress wood moldings, marble fireplaces, and the church’s stained glass windows while adding antiques bought at European flea markets and custom furniture built by New Orleans craftspeople…