Dauphine Orleans Hotel

Before becoming a hotel, this building served as a convent that functioned as a Civil War hospital, then transformed into May Bailey's Place, one of the French Quarter's most famous bordellos during the Storyville red-light district era.

The Dauphine Orleans Hotel at 415 Dauphine Street occupies buildings with a history stretching back to the late eighteenth century, when the land was owned by Don Andres Almonester y Roxas. The property passed through prominent Creole families including the Chauvins, Broutins, and Bonabels before being held from 1808 to 1822 by Augustin Macarty, a relation of the notorious Madame LaLaurie. In 1831, German-born banker Samuel Hermann Sr. commissioned architect William Brand to construct an elegant mansion on the site featuring cypress beams and handmade brick. Hermann's fortunes collapsed after the 1837 English Cotton Market crash, forcing him to abandon the home.

The building's most infamous chapter began in 1857 when May Baily opened her sporting house on the premises, a legally licensed brothel operating under New Orleans' Ordinance Concerning Lewd and Abandoned Women. May had been driven to the profession after her father was taken by yellow fever in 1847. She approached her father's friend for help, and May's Place quickly became one of the first and most notorious bordellos in the area that would later be formalized as Storyville, the city's legendary red-light district. The original city license for the brothel remains displayed in the hotel's current lounge. The neighboring White Elephant at 92-98 Dauphine was an even more dangerous establishment where desperate prostitutes robbed, pickpocketed, and sometimes murdered their clients. One woman named Eliza Riddle was arrested twenty-four times between 1881 and 1896 and imprisoned for ten years after stealing five hundred dollars.

The haunting centers on May Baily's younger sister, Millie, who despised everything the brothel represented. In 1861, Millie met a Confederate soldier at the establishment and fell deeply in love. He proposed marriage, and Millie saw her chance to escape the life she hated. But on the day of their wedding, her fiance was shot and killed in a gambling brawl. Millie never recovered. Guests at the hotel report seeing her apparition in a lace wedding gown standing near May Baily's bar, seemingly still waiting for her beloved to return. The phantom of a Confederate soldier has also been spotted in the outer courtyard, believed by some to be Millie's murdered groom.

May Baily's bar is considered the most haunted section of the entire hotel. Staff report glasses flying off the bar, levitating barstools, and doors that open and close on their own. Lights switch on and off without explanation, and employees and guests alike have felt cold touches on their skin when no one is nearby. Objects move without cause throughout the space. A paranormal investigation conducted by Dr. Larry Montz of the International Society for Paranormal Research identified a spirit named Eldridge, believed to be a Confederate officer. The team also detected the presence of a female spirit, identified as a former courtesan who specialized in mixing cocktails for her gentleman callers. Her presence manifests through liquor bottles along the back bar being found inexplicably rearranged, and she has been detected on electromagnetic field equipment. Television flickering, unexplained sounds in guest rooms, and bumps in the night round out the hotel's extensive catalog of paranormal activity.