 rom here turn right and head toward Canal Street, then make a left turn at Canal. About halfway up the block on your left at 824 is the only surviving former residence left intact on the downtown part of Canal. The Mercer House, also known as the: - Boston Club, was designed by James Gallier Sr and built in 1844 as a residence for Dr William Newton Mercer, a physician and cotton planter. It is a three-story, white-painted, brick-and-stucco townhouse with a wraparound gallery at the second floor. The house was of "country brick" overall with stucco overlaid,
and faced with Missouri marble on the first floor exterior. A hexagonal bay is attached to the left side of the house. In 1884 the house was occupied by the Boston Club, a private gemtlemen's club founded in 1841 by a group of mercantile and professional men for the purpose of enjoying the card game known as Boston. The club later became the headquarters for the Krewe of Rex carnival organization. Look across Canal Street from here, and you will see the Chateau Sonesta Hotel, at number 819. This was formerly the:
- D.H. Holmes Department Store, a longtime fixture of the downtown shopping scene until it closed in 1989. The first D.H. Holmes building to be built on this site was a beautiful
Gothic revival structure with cast-iron galleries that was built in 1849, and occupied a small single lot facing Canal Street. As the company grew, it needed to expand, so it acquired various adjoining properties until it stretched from Canal to Iberville. The Canal Street facade was renovated to a Beaux Arts style in 1913, and the Iberville side, with its own entrance, on the rear of the building, was redone earlier in 1905. The clock under the marquee in front of the store was the meeting spot for many New Orleanians, and gained notoriety as the spot where Ignatius J. Reilly's misadventures began in John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces. There is even a bronze statue of Toole's hero under the clock today! You will make a short side trip now by turning left at Baronne street,
and walking about halfway up the block. On your left will be the beautiful and imposing:
- Church of the Immaculate Conception, at 132 Baronne. Known by most locals as the Jesuit Church because of its establishment by the Society of Jesus, this Moorish/Arabian style church is actually an almost exact replica of an earlier church that stood on this site. It was built in 1930 to replace the original church which was completed in 1857. This earlier church had its problems at first, collapsing under its own weight because of the more than 200 tons of iron used in its construction. It was finished anyway, only to be torn down in 1926 in order to enlarge and modernize it. The church you see today has some minor difference from the first one such as new onion-domed
hexagonal towers that were planned but never finished; however, the original pews and iron columns were re-used for the new church. The facade of the dark red brick church features a large 8-pointed star-rosette window, three Moorish arches framing its entrances, and delicate Venetian Gothic tracery around its lovely stained-glass windows. The interior is just as beautiful and intricate, with Gothic pointed arches everywhere, spiral columns, elaborate cast-iron pews, and a lovely gilded-bronze altar, designed by James Freret, with more pointed arches and onion domes. Across Baronne Street from the Jesuit Church is the golden metal and glass marquee marking the main entrance to the:
- Fairmont Hotel/Old Roosevelt Hotel. One of the grandest of America's grand hotels,
the Fairmont is actuallty comprised of four buildings joined together to form one vast complex stretching from Baronne Street to University Place. It began life as the Hotel Grunewald in 1908, built in the Beaux Arts style on University Place, by Toledano and Wogan. The building on Baronne was later built in 1925 in the Spanish Renaissance style by the firm Favrot and Livaudais. The hotel was named for President Teddy Roosevelt, who was staying there at the time, in 1923. In 1965 it became the Fairmont. The University Place facade is the more interesting( you will pass it later on in the tour), with vertical rows of bay windows, and an ornate axial corridor/lobby runs from street to street. Check out this gorgeous lobby, then return to Canal Street, and turn left. The mammoth building on
the other side of Canal is the old:
 Maison Blanche Building. Built in 1906-09, this 13-story building is a massive white-terra-cotta, steel-frame structure designed by the Stone Brothers in a Turn-of-the-Century Beaux arts style. Fanciful baroque designs embellish the bulding, and columns of tile bring attention to the lower part. The Maison Blanche department store occupied the building when it was built, and was a popular destination for New Orleans shoppers on Canal Street for decades. After opening several branches in various malls across the area, the company gradually downsized in the late 1990s, and the Ritz-Carlton Hotel moved into the building in 2000.
Next door to the Maison Blanche Building, at 923, and part of the new Ritz-Carlton also, is the old:Kress Department Store. It was built right after the Maison Blanche building, in 1910, and designed by Emile Weil. Covered with terra cotta like the Maison Blanche building, the structure was defaced in 1963 with the addition to the front, of a metal curtain wall with a baked enamel finish, which gave the building a tacky artificial look. The facade was restored however, in 1983, and is used today as the automobile entryway for the hotel.
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