Shifting the Lens: Hermann-Grima House
The main courtyard at Hermann-Grima House, with the slave quarter building to the left and the back of the main house center.
August 2024In addition to their Urban Enslavement tour – named one of the city’s best tours by Condé Nast Traveler – Hermann-Grima has launched an astonishing online database of the individuals enslaved there.
– by Dean M. Shapiro and Ellis Anderson
photos by Ellis Anderson While it’s just steps from the raucous part of Bourbon Street, when we enter Hermann-Grima House property through its courtyard’s wide wooden gates, it's as if we’ve stepped through a portal to the past. The light is softer, the breeze is cooler and even the blare of amplified music fades away.
But in the South, the past isn’t all mint-juleps on verandas. We’ve come because, unlike many historic home tours in the South – ones that focus on the opulent lifestyle of its former owners – Hermann-Grima House shifts the lens dramatically. We’re here for the Urban Enslavement Tour.
Condé Nast Traveler calls the tour one of the best in New Orleans, noting it is “insightful and informative while remaining engaging…a skillfully woven presentation of a very evocative subject.”
Tessa Jagger, who serves as Executive Director at Hermann-Grima + Gallier Historic Houses, explains that the tour “focuses on the stories of the approximately 70 individuals we know were enslaved on the property.
“Our tour guides discuss the differences between urban and rural enslavement,” she adds, “as well as the contributions of people of African descent to the culture of New Orleans.”
The Tour
The tour’s roots go back to the late 1990s, when the museum began an in-depth research project. An outgrowth of that research became the museum’s Urban Enslavement Tour, while the records uncovered are now available to the public on an online database, launched on the Hermann-Grima website last year. This extraordinary database contains information about 70 individuals who were enslaved on the site.
A screenshot detail of the database of enslaved individuals on the Hermann-Grima website. Click on it to access directly.
Since in the early 1830s, most Southern states - including Louisiana - passed laws forbidding enslaved people to read or write, personal papers by enslaved people rarely exist. So the database was created through a deep dive into birth and death records, inventories, census, wills, etc.
Most of what was found has been scanned and visitors to the online database can pull up high-quality images of the original documents - many of which are written in French. Jagger notes that since new information is always being brought to light, the database is considered a work-in-progress.
Screenshot of a few digitized source documents for Sam Cunningham on the Hermann-Grima database. Click to explore the database.
The tour itself pays homage to dozens of enslaved people who lived and worked at the house, those who were unremembered and unnamed for more than 100 years. It begins in the expansive gardens behind the main house, then threads up to a room on the second floor of the slave quarters, which is furnished in period pieces.
Here, the guides introduce us to some of the people on the database – people like Maria and Sophie and Sam Cunningham, and we visualize them waking or rocking a baby’s cradle in the sparsely furnished room.
The main courtyard of Hermann-Grima House
The three-story slave quarter building with work rooms, storage and open hearth kitchen on the ground floor
A room where enslaved people lived
On the ground floor of the building, adjacent to the courtyard gardens, visitors are shown the kitchen – complete with its baking tools and hearth – and learn about the back-breaking processes required to prepare and serve sumptuous meals 200 years ago. It’s the only functioning open hearth kitchen remaining in the French Quarter and twice a month on Saturdays (November - April) it's fired up for cooking demonstrations.
In the main house, we were led through parlors filled with elaborate furnishings, shelves of books and table games, imported china and crystal. Bedrooms boast massive hand-carved canopied beds and hand-painted wallpaper. The contrast between the two different qualities of life experienced by property’s occupants came into high contrast.
Docent Robert Bryant speaking to tour members inside the main house
A portion of one front parlor
Docent and shop manager Katy Maddox giving a tour
Our group also learned the builder of the house itself, William Brand, used a predominantly enslaved workforce. And we discovered that much of the magnificent house detailing and the furnishings were created by free people of color or remarkably talented craftsmen who were enslaved by various business owners.
The Museum
The Hermann-Grima House (820 St. Louis) and its sister museum, Gallier House – eight blocks away on Royal Street – are grouped together as a single museum under the management of The Woman’s Exchange of New Orleans. Both buildings date back to the 1800s, offering visitors glimpses of what urban life was like pre and post-Civil War.
The Hermann-Grima House is the oldest of the two and the size of the campus - which includes the main house, the slave quarters and the carriage house/stable – makes it one of the largest properties in the French Quarter. It dates from 1831 and takes its name from the families of the first two owners, Samuel Hermann, who owned the house until 1844, and Felix Grima who bought the house from him and whose family owned it until 1921.
One of the earliest examples of American architecture in the Quarter, like most Federal-style buildings, the main house is simple and rectangular, focusing on symmetry and balance. And like most French Quarter buildings, there’s no front yard – the front of the house meets the sidewalk.
But on one side, there’s a wide brick patio with a smaller auxiliary building facing it. That’s the former carriage house and stables - the only surviving historic stable in the neighborhood.
The stable courtyard
The former carriage house and stables, now the Exchange Shop
Inside the Exchange Shop where most of the offerings are created by local women artists.
Tour tickets can be purchased inside at the museum store, called the Exchange Shop. It features a curated selection of unexpected temptations, most of them created by local women artists.
Jagger explained that back in 1924, when Hermann-Grima was first purchased by the Women’s Exchange of New Orleans (which still owns and operates both historic house museums), it was used as a boarding house for single women and residents were allowed to earn money selling their handmade goods on consignment. After more than 40 years of serving as a women’s residence, the building was declared a National Historic Landmark and after restoration, reopened as a museum in 1971.
The one-hour tours are offered six days a week, Wednesday through Monday from 10am - 4pm. Tickets can be purchased online or in the Exchange Shop. The admission of $17 ($14 for seniors, military and children) includes the guided tour.
Purchasing tickets to both Hermann-Grima House and its sister museum, Gallier House, at the same time nets you a healthy discount: Then it’s only $25, or $20 for seniors, military and children, for both museums (if you’re purchasing online, click through to checkout to see the additional tour option with discount).
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