The Roosevelt Hotel New Orleans

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The Roosevelt Hotel is a building in New Orleans, Louisiana.

View of the hotel in its early years as "The Grunewald"

View in the Cave in the Grunewald Hotel in the early 1900s

In 1834, the site was known as University Place and in this year the Medical University of Louisiana was founded. In 1847, Medical University of Louisiana was renamed to University of Louisiana. Later, in 1884, the school was renamed to its current name Tulane University. The hotel was built by Louis Grunewald, a German immigrant, and opened in 1893 as "The Grunewald". After various expansions it was purchased by a group of New Orleans investors and renamed "The Roosevelt Hotel" (in honor of late former president Theodore Roosevelt) in 1923. The long-time manager in this era was Seymour Weiss who was a confidant of U.S Senator and Louisiana Governor Huey Long. During the 1930s, Long used a suite at the Roosevelt as his headquarters. The Roosevelt was acquired by Fairmont Hotels and Resorts in 1965. Although officially renamed "The Fairmont", many locals continued referring to it as "The Roosevelt" even decades later.

When it was the Grunewald Hotel it hosted "The Cave", considered by some the first nightclub in the United States. It featured waterfalls, stalactites, and chorus girls dancing to Dixieland jazz. As the Roosevelt, a new night club, "The Blue Room", was opened and was long a well known venue of nationally touring musical acts.

The Fairmont was known for the Sazerac Bar and the Sazerac Room for the finest dining. Another restaurant in the Fairmont, "Bailey's", was for decades known as one of the few places open all odd hours of the night and early morning serving food significantly better than cheap diners or bar food. The main lobby area was elaborately decorated each Christmas season, and many locals made visiting the Christmas display at "the Roosevelt" part of their yearly holiday tradition.

The Fairmont New Orleans was damaged in Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and closed indefinitely. While some repair work was done, work was suspended in an incomplete state in March of 2007 after preliminary estimates of the damage were revealed to have been greatly underestimated. ^[1].

On August 24, 2007, Dimension Development Company of Natchitoches, Louisiana, announced the purchase of the Fairmont Hotel for 17 million dollars from the owners, Roosevelt Ventures, LLC. Also announced was the plan to spend 100 million dollars to convert the hotel to one of Hilton's premium hotels in their Waldorf Astoria Collection chain.

The return to the hotel's historic name and a planned re-opening date of spring 2009 were announced on June 5, 2008.^[2]