Old absinthe house1/27/2024 ![]() ![]() back into the liquor business when Repeal was announced suggests he might have sort of kept a hand in, one way or another. But he had incorporated, right before Prohibition, and the speed with which he brought his Sazerac Corp. He died in 1928, having never picked up his bar tools again.Ĭhris O’Reilly, owner of the Sazerac bar, wriggled around for a while-when the soda fountain failed, he tried a restaurant, then a delicatessen, then he went into the hardware trade, leaving the Marx Art Store to take over the hallowed old space. Ramos and his brother then went into the paint business (their brand: “Ramos Jinn Phizz Paints”). As for Ramos, he quit his lease, auctioned off all of the bar’s fixtures-from the “elegant mahogany bar…and counters costing $6,000” to the large oil paintings of race-horses and such, to the “beautiful art glass canopy, 50 feet long” that graced the front of the building-and turned over the keys to François Sartre, who had run the reasonably popular “Old 27” restaurant on Carondelet St. There was liquor, too, of course, but after one bust the bar stuck to the straight and narrow. The Sazerac reopened as an “oyster bar and soda fount,” selling a non-alcoholic “Sazerac Fizz” concocted by Joe Pittari, late of Henry Ramos’s bar. Without the drinks, the rest of the package was in danger, like a three-legged stool when you take a Carrie-Nation hatchet to one of the legs.Īll three of the famous bars that served as tent-poles for the city’s drinking culture-the Sazerac bar, Henry Ramos’s Stag Café, and the Old Absinthe House-were of course forced to stop serving alcohol. A quarter of a century before, it had transformed itself from a commercial port city into a tourist Mecca, on the basis of good food, good times and good drinks-and plenty of them. In fact, Prohibition really threw the city for a loop. ![]() As one would expect, New Orleans was in the grumbling half. Patrons have reported seeing the spectral figure of a pirate floating near the Old Absinthe House bar late at night, Several apparitions craving an Absinthe House Frappe have been spotted gliding about, leaving cold spots in their wake, and laughing ghostly laughs in close proximity to the bar throughout the decades.Prohibition descended on a deeply divided land, where half the people were grumbling and incredulous and half grimly satisfied at the other half’s discomfiture. The Old Absinthe House is rumored to be the spot where future President of the United States Andrew Jackson met with French pirate Jean Laffite to work out a strategy to subdue British forces in what would be known as the Battle of New Orleans. Once the Prohibition went into effect in 1920, Absinthe House was converted into a speakeasy that served bootleg liquor to savvy guests until the sale of alcohol was legalized again in 1933. In the early 20th century, an alarmist report by a puritanical medical doctor that said absinthe was as dangerous as opium, and an increasingly virulent temperance movement seemingly spelled the end for Absinthe House. Famous bohemians such as occultist Aleister Crowley flocked to the Absinthe House to spend hours dreaming up new creative projects while sipping on the infamous bright green spirit. Absinthe was all the rage in late nineteenth century because it was believed to have hallucinogenic properties. In the late 1800s, bartender Cayetano Ferrer invented a wildly popular absinthe cocktail called The Absinthe House Frappe. In the early 1800s, the ground floor of the building was converted into a boozy European-style coffeehouse-and the rest is history. ![]() The Old Absinthe House is located in an ornate white building on Bourbon Street, which was once a bustling neighborhood grocery store. One of the most celebrated and enduring watering holes in the Big Easy is without a doubt Jean Lafitte’s Old Absinthe House. New Orleans is home to countless legendary bars.
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