The Barnett: Art Deco Soul, Modern Mischief in New Orleans
History that parties, design that remembers
A Warehouse District Legend Reborn
There’s no city in America that metabolizes history the way New Orleans does — and The Barnett is proof. Formerly the hip Ace Hotel, this 1928 Art Deco landmark originally opened as Barnett’s Furniture Store, a beloved mom-and-pop institution with deep neighborhood roots. Today, reimagined as a boutique hotel in the Warehouse District, The Barnett holds onto the bones, the soul, the swagger — while shedding every trace of played-out hipster tropes. The original terrazzo floors are intact, grounding the lobby in architectural honesty, while an eclectic constellation of custom and vintage lighting warms the volume of the space rather than performing for attention. It’s design that is quietly confident, not screaming for the algorithm.
Guestrooms with Poetry, Pattern + Play
Ascend the staircase and you enter the hotel’s private vocabulary — rooms that feel like someone designed them with a strong literary mind and an even stronger eye for detail. Painted wooden armoires bring character without kitsch, and modernist furniture pieces add sculptural clarity. The beds are dressed in charcoal grey matelassé coverlets embroidered with patterns lifted from 1920s French Abstraction — a refined, cerebral wink to the hotel’s own era of origin. High ceilings deliver a rare sense of air and space, a gift from the building’s industrial past — and full-sized Smeg fridges stocked with cocktail fixings make it explicit that here, pleasure is part of the design brief.
Public Spaces with True Social Gravity
In New Orleans, if your public spaces don’t have a pulse, the hotel fails. The Barnett has a pulse. It has a heartbeat. It has a night. Seaworthy inhabits an 1832 Creole cottage — a transportive setting with the kind of intimacy that makes strangers talk to each other. Trattoria Barnett fuses classic Italian appetite with Southern generosity in a way that feels both inevitable and fresh. The Rooftop is the city in panorama: small plates, seasonal cocktails, the skyline, the air. And Bar New Orleanians — operated by French hospitality legends Quixotic Projects — is where the building tips into storytelling mode: a marriage of European apéritif culture and Caribbean warmth that keeps you in the glass and in the moment.
A Gateway to the Real Crescent City
The Barnett sits at the crossroads of Carondelet and Lafayette, within the newly revitalized Warehouse District — close to museums, galleries, institutions of culture, and a short walk to the French Quarter. It is positioned at the intersection between everything you want to see and everywhere you shouldn’t miss. This is not the French Quarter caricatured version of New Orleans — this is the version where the city’s contemporary energy is actually happening.
DNA Hotels Verdict
The Barnett is a hotel that understands that preservation is meaningless without evolution. The past isn’t trapped in amber here — it’s in conversation with right now. This is New Orleans through a sophisticated Art Deco lens: sultry, intelligent, indulgent, and a little dangerous. The story is history, the voice is modern, the night is alive. And the memories — they’re the kind that get retold.
