Secret room added mystery to New Orleans mansion, home to movers and shakers for 139 years (2024)

The fire that tore through a venerable Mississippi River mansion in Arabi on Sept. 20, 1939, did its job thoroughly.

What little was left of the three-story structure would be finished off for good by the hurricane of 1947.

Those two-decade-apart indignities marked an inglorious end to a once-grand edifice, built nearly a century and a half earlier and referred to far and wide as the Chateau des Fleurs — the House of Flowers — for the vast and colorful foliage that once blanketed its grounds.

In the 139 years it stood, overlooking the river at Angela Street, it would become a landmark, passing through the hands of a number of prominent local families and standing with grace — as well as a dash of mystery — as a physical reminder of St. Bernard Parish’s past.

A grand beginning

Its story starts in 1808, when it was built using slave labor for deep-pocketed local merchant David Urquhart, whose family name still graces a street running through the St. Claude neighborhood.

Urquhart was also, notably, the grandfather of Gilded Age star Cora Urquhart Brown-Potter, who found fame as a part of New York’s social set and, later, as a stage actress in London.

The house, framed in wood, held together with pegs and dovetail joints and ringed by 29 white pillars, boasted 15 rooms, with a wraparound porch on its first and second floors.

According to a 1923 writeup in Country Life magazine, the first floor by then contained the kitchen, a red-tiled banquet hall, a breakfast room and a wine cellar. The second floor was home to a library, drawing room, hall and bedrooms. The third floor, illuminated by a series of dormer windows, was all bedrooms.

“Added to the charm of furnishings and garden, the … home has the romantic element of a ‘secret chamber,’” the article’s author, Cecile Willink, wrote. “This is a silent, sealed room on the second floor, closed up nobody knows when. Whether it hides a space of mere cobwebby darkness, or some uncanny mystery, nobody knows.”

The owners at the time “prefer to follow the example of the previous owner and keep their ‘room of mystery,’ which shows how wise they are,” Willink continued. “Were the seals broken, all the mystery thrills, like the ills of Pandora’s box, would take flight. Now the members of the household can let their imaginations go on a jaunt at pleasure. They have only to slip softly past the silent doorway at the magic hour of dusk, or in the faint glimmer of a new moon, with the scent of night jasmine in the air borne up from the garden, to (imagine) the eeriest fantasy.”

Changing hands

By 1833, the estate had been purchased by a member of another prominent local family, Alexander de Lesseps, a sugar planter and cousin of Ferdinand de Lesseps, developer of the Suez Canal.

Among Alexander de Lesseps’ descendants: deLesseps “Chep” Morrison, the four-time mayor of New Orleans (famously linked to actress Zsa Zsa Gabor) who later served as John F. Kennedy’s ambassador to the Organization of American States.

During de Lesseps’ ownership, the house would still merit its Chateau des Fleurs moniker. It would even become a destination of sorts, as evidenced by an 1870 advertisem*nt in The Daily Picayune for “a grand vocal and instrumental concert” to be held “at this delightful resort.”

That same decade, the house was again put up for sale. The new owner: the French-born Joseph Maumus, a one-time butcher who, as a founder of St. Bernard Bank and Trust, would become a pillar of the community.

Upon Maumus’ death in 1918, the house passed to daughter Anita Maumus Meraux, whose marriage 10 years earlier to Dr. L.A. Meraux united the two influential local families.

A house of power

As an early ally of Gov. Huey P. Long, Doc Meraux — as he was widely known — would become a major St. Bernard Parish political powerbroker, amassing vast land holdings and serving as sheriff from 1924 until his death in 1938.

A year later, the house — still occupied by Anita Maumus Meraux and filled with antique furniture — burned. Firefighters blamed faulty wiring installed as part of a recent renovation.

No one was reported injured in the 8 p.m. blaze; Meraux wasn’t home. But by the time firefighters arrived, it had torn through the second floor and was at work in the attic, fueled by dry, century-plus-old timbers.

“Nothing remained after the fire but a skeleton of the building,” The Times-Picayune reported. “The roof had caved in and the framework of the second story was exposed, the white pillars still rising intact on the porches.”

The Chateau des Fleurs was, for all intents and purposes, gone.

As for that “mystery room”? It remains a mystery to this day.

Sources: The Times-Picayune archive; Library of Congress; “Louisiana: A Guide to the State”; “Architectural Daguerreotypes of Louisiana,” by Cecilia Link, as published in Country Life magazine, Vol. XLIV, No. 6, October 1923

Do you know of a New Orleans building worth profiling in this column, or just curious about one? Contact Mike Scott at moviegoermike@gmail.com.