The Pontalba Buildings form two sides of Jackson Square in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana.
These are matching red-brick one-block-long four‑story buildings built in the 1840s by the Baroness Micaela Almonester Pontalba. The ground floors house shops and restaurants; and the upper floors are apartments that are supposedly, the oldest continuously rented such apartments in the United States.
Baroness Pontalba, an accomplished businesswoman, invested in real estate, purchasing the land on the upriver and downriver sides of the Place d’Armes, and constructed two Parisian-style row house buildings in the 1840s, at a cost of over $300,000.
The building fronting Rue St. Peter, upriver from the Place d’Armes, is the Upper Pontalba, and the building on the other side, fronting Rue St. Ann, the Lower Pontalba.
Baroness Pontalba died in France in 1874, and the Pontalba family retained ownership of the buildings until the 1920s, but they did not take an interest in the townhouses, so the buildings fell into disrepair. The Pontalba heirs sold the lower building to local philanthropist William Ratcliffe Irby, who in turn bequeathed the property to the Louisiana State Museum. Local civic leaders acquired the upper building, which they sold to a foundation in 1930, the Pontalba Building Museum Association. The association turned the upper building over to the city of New Orleans, which has owned it since.
According to Christina Vella, historian of modern Europe, the Pontalba buildings were not the first apartment buildings in the United States, as is commonly believed, because they were originally built as row houses, not apartments. The Pontalba buildings were turned into apartments during the 1930s renovation.
In the short story "Hidden Gardens", Truman Capote describes the Pontalba Buildings as "...the oldest, in some ways most somberly elegant, apartment houses in America, the Pontalba Buildings."
They were declared a National Historic Landmark in 1974.
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