The Columns Hotel

Simon Hernsheim made his money in tobacco, and in 1883 he built himself a Richardsonian Romanesque mansion at 3811 St. Charles Avenue with a wide columned front gallery that overlooks the streetcar tracks. It's the best porch in New Orleans — not for architectural distinction alone, but because the hotel bar and the gallery are both open to non-guests, which means you can sit there in the late afternoon with a drink and watch the streetcars pass under the oaks. That experience costs you nothing but the price of the drink. Louis Malle filmed *Pretty Baby* here in 1978, the columns and gallery serving as backdrop for a film set in an earlier New Orleans. The building now operates as a hotel, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, but it hasn't sealed itself off from the avenue. The bar welcomes anyone who walks in. The porch welcomes anyone who wants to sit. A late afternoon drink on the gallery watching streetcars pass under the oaks is one of the finest free experiences in the city — in a city that was once the largest port in the Southern United States, that exported most of the nation's cotton to Western Europe and New England, that has always understood the value of offering its best without charging admission. Hernsheim built for tobacco money and permanence. What endures is the gallery, the streetcar tracks, and the invitation to sit down.