A House is a Very, Very Fine House

The History of the Soniat House

As a collection of important Creole dwellings in New Orleans’ storied French Quarter, the buildings that comprise Soniat House are as well-documented in official records as they are in local lore.  And yet, despite their grand and auspicious beginnings, it has taken the extraordinary dedication and vision of their present owners to restore them to their original glory -- 

Today, Soniat House is regarded as the finest boutique hotel in the city, and is recognized by industry experts to be among the finest in the country.  The family that first lived here would be right at home.  The oldest of the three elegant townhouses was built in 1830 by Joseph Soniat Dufossat, a prosperous Creole planter whose father was an aristocratic officer sent by Louis XV to help protect the colony of Louisiana against Indian uprisings. His mother was herself descended from Louis VI.  Dufossat had four sons by his first marriage, and nine children by his second wife, a New Orleans belle famous for her political wit as well as her beauty.  This numerous family lived in grand style on its Tchoupitoulas Plantation, supported by crops of sugar, corn, rice, and indigo.   

As the children grew up, it was decided that the family should have a house in town, to expand their society and exposure to their mother’s cosmopolitan culture.  A tract of land that had recently been sold off by the Ursuline Convent was bought for the purpose, and Joseph Soniat Dufossat, at the advanced age of nearly sixty, began building his ample New Orleans residence. 

Even in such a commodious house, it’s hard to imagine the crush of inhabitants at full capacity, including thirteen children and, eventually, their attendant spouses and children of their own.  In 1834, one of the family’s elder sons, Edmond, built an even grander townhouse for his own family directly across the street.  Rodney Smith, who owns Soniat House with his wife Frances, likes to imagine members of the family having conversations from their balconies across the street.  In that imaginative spirit, they have, over the course of twenty-five years, reunited the family “compound,” which is now expanded, meticulously restored, and filled with fine French and Louisiana antiques that reflect the houses’ heritage. 

Joseph Soniat Dufossat died in 1852, and his widow lived on in their house until 1865.  Over the successive years it had many owners – including the one who added the stylish cast iron gallery that still graces the façade – and its state declined with the rest of the neighborhood as this quiet residential end of the Quarter became less fashionable.  It was first renovated in the 1940s, and was joined to the adjacent house to create a small hotel, one of the first of many such conversions in the Quarter.  By the time Rodney Smith rescued it in 1981, the house was once again dilapidated – but had finally found an owner who would lavish it with the same love, attention, and resources as Joseph Soniat Dufossat had, exactly a century-and-a-half before.

Not all the history of Soniat House has been so clearly documented -- for years, the Smiths had been unable to discover much information about its charming two-story cottage.  It now serves as an independent guest house, offering complete privacy with full hotel services, including a catering kitchen.  The handsome cypress paneling and upper balcony suggested it had always been a modest but comfortable residence.  The upstairs was accordingly upholstered top-to-bottom in a refreshing blue and white toile, and is one of Rodney Smith’s favorite rooms among the dozens he has decorated at Soniat House.  Then one day during a Jazz Fest event, 98-year old trumpeter Lionel Ferbos appeared on the scene.  “This was my father’s blacksmith shop,” he announced.  A metal-worker himself, by day, throughout most of his musical career, Ferbos had at last cleared up the only real mystery in the Soniat House provenence.  Serendipity?  Par for the course, really, for this charmed establishment.