The claim
On the corner of Chartres and St Louis in the French Quarter, Napoleon House takes its name from a plan to fetch the exiled emperor here that came to nothing. The National Park Service dates the two-storey part of the house to 1794 and the three-storey corner to 1814, and made it a National Historic Landmark in 1970. The Impastato family held it from 1914; the Pimm's Cup is the house drink.
What the records show
The building is far older than the bar, and the bar's own two best sources disagree about when it opened. The front of napoleonhouse.com says the house has been owned and operated by the Impastato family since 1914 and by Ralph Brennan since May 2015, and its history page says that in 1914 the family bought the property and Joseph "Uncle Joe" Impastato turned it into the restaurant and bar. The National Trust for Historic Preservation, writing in February 2019, has Joseph Impastato renting the property in 1914 and buying it in 1920, and says the ground floor was a grocery first and a bar later, trading even through Prohibition. It names no year for the change, so 1914 dates a tenancy rather than a counter and the grade is C. The oldest dated record of drinking here that has been traced is federal: the National Register of Historic Places nomination of 15 July 1975 notes that a bar and grill is on the first floor and that the rest of the house has been converted into apartments. That same form is the authority for the fabric, dating the two-storey section to 1794, built by Claude François Girod, and the three-storey corner house to 1814, built by his brother Nicolas Girod during his first term as mayor; the bar's own account gives 1797 instead. The house was made a National Historic Landmark on 15 April 1970 for its French colonial architecture, and the rescue plan that gave it its name — Girod and Jean Lafitte fetching Napoleon from Saint Helena — has never been shown to have existed. The form gives the address as 504 Chartres Street and everything since has 500. The doors were checked on 9 October 2026: the house's own site publishes hours of eleven in the morning until ten at night, seven days a week, takes no reservations, and carried a banner that day naming the last seating for the following afternoon.
| Year | What | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 1914 | Claimed founding | The pub |
| c.1794 | Present building | National Register of Historic Places nomination for the Mayor Girod House, 1975 |
| 1975 | First record of a drinking house here | The National Register nomination of 1975 |
What to look for inside
- National Historic Landmark, designated 15 April 1970
- Two-storey section of 1794, three-storey corner of 1814
- Says it was the first house in America to pour a Pimm's Cup
Visiting
Napoleon House is in New Orleans, United States, at 500 Chartres Street, New Orleans, Louisiana 70130. We do not list opening times, because they change; the pub’s own site is the place to check before you set out.
Sources
- www.napoleonhouse.com/
- www.napoleonhouse.com/history
- npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/GetAsset/NRHP/70000254_text
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon_House
- savingplaces.org/stories/preserving-200-years-of-history-in-the-french-quarters-napoleon-house
- www.diffordsguide.com/pubs-and-bars/770/new-orleans/napoleon-house
- www.openstreetmap.org/node/331325950
Know something we don’t?Suggest a correctionLast checked Oct 2026
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