The Old Absinthe House , on Bourbon Street in New Orleans’s French Quarter, was considered for most of the twentieth century the most famous bar in the United States. The bar, apparently New Orleans’s oldest, has long been swaddled in a nimbus of lore and legend. It is said (on the basis of what nobody seems to know) that Jean Lafitte met here with Andrew Jackson to plot their defense of the city against the British during the War of 1812 (he didn’t). Other notables said to have patronized the bar include Oscar Wilde, P. T. Barnum, Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and a slew of southern statesmen and Confederate generals. Many of them actually did.
The two-and-a-half-story building was constructed in 1806 as a grocery, with the ground floor converted into to a “coffee house”—New Orleanian for “bar”—in 1836 (the date the bar gave in 1878, although accounts differ). By 1842 it was being managed by members of the Aleix family, Catalonian immigrants like the building’s owners. On their watch, while not one of the leading bars in the city, it nonetheless had a certain following among New Orleans’s bohemian set. Even then, its specialty was absinthe, judging by the fact that in 1869 Leopold Aleix was advertising it as the “Absinthe House.”
In 1870 or thereabouts, Aleix hired away the highly regarded bartender at the French Opera House, one Cayetano Ferrer (ca. 1827–1886), a kinsman who came to the city from his native Barcelona in 1844. He took over the bar three years later. Under his management and that of his heirs, the bar, now billed as the “Old Absinthe Room” or the “Old Absinthe House,” was instrumental in the city’s transformation from a gritty, working city into a tourist hub. Along with the Sazerac House and Henry Ramos’s Imperial Cabinet, it became one of the three iconic New Orleans bars at which visitors were practically obliged to stop in. With its custom-made marble absinthe fountains and its drink specialties, the Absinthe Drip and the Absinthe Frappé, it more than any other bar emphasized the uniqueness of New Orleans’s heavily French-influenced culture. (Some claim Cayetano Ferrer invented the latter drink there in 1872; in any case, the bar’s location was known as “the corner of absinthe and anisette” after the Frappé’s active ingredients.)
When absinthe imports were banned in the United States in 1912, the bar allegedly bought and stored seventeen thousand cases, keeping it supplied until Prohibition in 1920—and possibly beyond. After repeatedly running afoul of regulators during Prohibition, the bar was padlocked for a year. When it reopened in 1928, it was missing its old fixtures, which Pierre Cazebonne, who had bought the bar from the Ferrers in 1913, had dismantled and moved to a nearby soda fountain. (This opened as the Old Absinthe House Bar after Repeal with Cayetano’s son Jacinto “Jos” Ferrer behind the bar, leading to some confusion.) Until 1943, the Absinthe House was run primarily as a dance hall, under various managers. The first and most prominent of them was Mary Lee “Mamie” Kelley (1890–1972), owner of the notorious Kelley’s Ritz in Panama City, Panama, and immortalized by Cole Porter as “Panama Hattie.” She lasted until 1931. It is doubtful that she followed the dry law (“Just say that I never took a rap,” she told an interviewer in 1961).
In 1943, the bar became the keystone of another New Orleans family dynasty when it was bought by Owen Brennan (1910–1955), then a whisky salesman. He got rid of the dancing, brought in food and cabaret entertainment, and turned it once again into one of the most popular establishments in the city; the Brennan family sold it in 1963 when business had fallen off.
By 1970, the bar had been acquired by James Jr. and Anthony “Tony” Moran, sons of “Diamond Jim” Moran, a onetime associate of the Marcello organized crime family who later went into the restaurant business. As Bourbon Street slid into exploitation and even prostitution, the Old Absinthe House was sucked down with it. In 2002, by which time it was running as a more or less regular Bourbon Street bar, the Morans sold it to Kuwait-born Daiquiri-bar proprietor Yousef “Jober’t” Salem al-Adwan (1965–), who also acquired the original bar and fixtures and reinstalled them in a back room of the building. See Bourbon Street drinks.
Today, the Old Absinthe House remains a raffish, atmospheric destination despite the televisions and lite beer that dominate the barroom and its being under near constant siege by brides-to-be and bachelorettes wearing plastic tiaras. As hallowed ground, it remains worthy of a stop, especially if one can see the original green marble absinthe fountains in the rear bar. Despite its various alterations and reconstructions, it remains the oldest continually operating (more or less) bar in New Orleans and one of the very oldest in America. In late 2018, the old bar and its marble fountains underwent restoration, and plans are now afoot to recapture the establishment’s former reputation.
absinthe and Absinthe Frappé.“The Absinthe House.” New Orleans Daily Democrat, June 20, 1869, 1.
Burke, Michael. “Mob Allegations Based on Innuendo.” Pensacola News-Journal. March 8, 1983, 2.
Jacobs, Howard. “Death Knell Sounded of Bourbon Bistro.” New Orleans Times-Picayune, May 1, 1963, 13.
“The Old Absynthe Room.” New Orleans Daily Democrat, November 16, 1878, 5.
“Seventy Five Years.” New Orleans Times-Democrat, July 19, 1901, 3.
Williams, Elizabeth C., and Chris McMillian. Lift Your Spirits: A Celebratory History of Cocktail Culture in New Orleans. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2016.
By: Wayne Curtis and David Wondrich