Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop, National Historic Landmark bar in French Quarter, New Orleans, United States.
Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop is an eighteenth-century building on Bourbon Street in the French Quarter, constructed with briquette-entre-poteaux technique using bricks and wooden beams. The dimly lit rooms retain the original layout with low ceilings and a large fireplace at the back wall.
The first notarized record of the lot dates to 8 October 1773, when María Catalina La Roche transferred it to Bartholome Robert; the building itself is usually dated to 1772. It survived the New Orleans fires of 1788 and 1794. In the 1940s Tom Caplinger opened Café Lafitte here, and after a 1953 sale he founded Café Lafitte in Exile at 901 Bourbon Street.
The name recalls the Lafitte brothers, though no record shows they owned the building; Jean's older brother Pierre was a blacksmith, and associate Renato Beluche may have owned it. In the 1940s Tom Caplinger opened Café Lafitte here, drawing a bohemian crowd including Noël Coward and Tennessee Williams. The bar still operates under the Lafitte name.
The building stands at the southwest corner where Bourbon Street meets St. Philip Street. The Bourbon Street facade has three evenly spaced doors and one window; the St. Philip Street side has one door and one window. The interior was opened into a single large room for the bar, with a narrow spiral staircase in the north corner leading to the attic.
Some visitors report unusual sightings near the old fireplace, including a figure in sailor's clothing that people connect to the former owner. This detail adds to the building's reputation as a place with unexplained phenomena, drawing the curious.
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