If the walls at the Dew Drop Inn could talk, they would probably sing. Maybe they’d also laugh along to memories of comedy acts and marvel at the panoply of other performers who came through, and perhaps talk of the momentous nights when superstars of American music visited its small stage.

Today, the walls around this nearly-lost, now-resurgent landmark of New Orleans history and Black culture are filling again with stories of the past, and also with excitement and anticipation for the future here.

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The Dew Drop Inn’s façade in the 1950s.

Tulane Digital Library Photos
In its first heyday, from the 1940s through the 1960s, the Dew Drop Inn was a hotel, music club and barber shop that served a vital and multifaceted role. During Jim Crow-era segregation it was a magnet for Black talent, an important stop on the Chitlin’ Circuit, a hub of Black New Orleans social life and an oasis for Black travelers in the region.

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The Dew Drop Inn Hotel and Lounge is a revived hotel, restaurant and music venue in New Orleans. (Photo by Chris Granger, The Times-Picayune)

In the decades since, the Dew Drop Inn has lived in lore, while its property on Lasalle Street in Central City deteriorated and tilted further toward what looked like the end. But now it has a new beginning.

The new Dew Drop Inn is now open after a sweeping renovation. Its grand opening festivities took place over the weekend, including performances from Irma Thomas and Deacon John on stage Friday and hip-hop duo Partners-n-Crime on Saturday.

History, vision
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Dew Drop Inn Hotel and Lounge owner Curtis Doucette Jr., sits in a barber’s chair that was part of the original barbershop started by Frank Painia in New Orleans. (Photo by Chris Granger, The Times-Picayune)

Today, the Dew Drop Inn is led by a proprietor determined to honor its past and move its traditional role forward to express New Orleans culture today.

That is Curtis Doucette Jr., a New Orleans native and founder of the real estate company Iris Development. He took on the revival of Dew Drop Inn as his own separate passion project.

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An old-school designed stage in the newly renovated Dew Drop Inn Hotel and Lounge in New Orleans. (Photo by Chris Granger, The Times-Picayune)

To Doucette, the Dew Drop Inn today is not a recreation of the past, but the reincarnation of the spirit that defined it.

“We’re not just showcasing history, we’re making it here too,” he said.

“I see it as a piece of living history. If the old Dew Drop had made it to today, what would it be like? That’s what we want this to be.”

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The renovated design of the Dew Drop Inn in New Orleans features open spaces with views of the hallway ceiling so that visitors can get a perspective of how the two historical buildings were merged into one many years ago. (Photo by Chris Granger, The Times-Picayune)

Today’s Dew Drop Inn is a 17-room hotel and a music venue with room for about 400 people in the main hall. It’s also a neighborhood bar and restaurant, and there’s a small museum too, designed as an homage to the original venue’s barber shop, with the vintage barber chair still swiveling by the shop window.

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An original chair that was in the barbershop that was run by Frank Painia who originally bought what became the Dew Drop Inn. A small room is located in the newly renovated location that pays tribute to the areas history in New Orleans on Tuesday, February 27, 2024. (Photo by Chris Granger, The Times-Picayune)

(Photo by Chris Granger The Times-Picayune)
This is a place to see a show, to have breakfast or lunch or an anytime drink, a place for an overnight stay or just a dip in the pool. Overarching in all, the Dew Drop Inn is a place to connect with the history it embodies and the culture it represents.

Weaving many threads
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The exterior of the renovated Dew Drop Inn in New Orleans. (Photo by Chris Granger, The Times-Picayune)

A Black barber from Plaquemines Parish named Frank Pania set up shop on Lasalle Street in 1939 and added a bar next door, which he called the Dew Drop Inn. It would grow into a complex by expanding and incorporating adjacent properties, adding to its many roles and amenities.

Segregation would define the way it developed, offering Black residents and travelers barred from service elsewhere more of what they sought in one place. This applied to everyday people and major stars.

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Audiences at the Dew Drop Inn watch a performance by vaudeville entertainer Lollypop Jones in 1952.

Photo courtesy of Tulane University, William Ransom Hogan Archive of New Orleans Jazz
Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, James Brown, Little Richard, Solomon Burke and Bobby “Blue” Bland were among the names to come through. One playbill from a show in 1961 lists New Orleans greats Allen Toussaint, Art Neville, Irma Thomas, Jessie Hill, Ernie K-Doe and Earl King all taking the Dew Drop stage on a single night.

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Audiences at the Dew Drop Inn watch a performance by vaudeville entertainer Lollypop Jones in 1952.

Photo courtesy of Tulane University, William Ransom Hogan Archive of New Orleans Jazz
Many threads run through the Dew Drop Inn, including a role in mid-century gay culture in New Orleans. One of the personalities to find a professional home here was the drag queen Patsy Vidalia, who served as emcee from the 1950s to 1960s and hosted the annual New Orleans Gay Ball at the Dew Drop Inn each Halloween.

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Two copies of the Green Book which was a guidebook for African American travelers from 1936-1966. It’s on display inside the Dew Drop Inn Hotel and Lounge in New Orleans on Tuesday, February 27, 2024. (Photo by Chris Granger, The Times-Picayune)

(Photo by Chris Granger The Times-Picayune)
Pania allowed White patrons at the Dew Drop Inn, in violation of segregation laws, and the club saw police raids as a result.

The civil rights lawyers A.P. Tureaud and Ernest “Dutch” Morial (the future mayor) sued New Orleans on Pania’s behalf to challenge segregation laws and gained an injunction to end the raids before segregation legally ended.

The injustices of segregation provided the conditions under which the Dew Drop Inn grew. Doucette explains that it was the end of segregation that would lead to its decline. With more doors open to Black customers and performers, the Dew Drop Inn’s prominence faded. The last shows here were in 1970. Pania died in 1972. His family ran it as a hotel but the glory days were long past by the time it finally shuttered after Hurricane Katrina.

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The Dew Drop Inn and Hotel, a former hotel and nightclub, sits vacant in the Central City neighborhood of New Orleans, Tuesday, Nov. 20, 2018.

PHOTO BY SOPHIA GERMER / THE TIMES-PICAYUNE
Different developers had floated plans for the property through the post-Katrina years. It was Doucette who finally made it work. He bought the property in 2021 from Pania’s grandson, Kenneth Jackson, who remains a part owner today.

Bar, restaurant, venue
From the street the Dew Drop Property still looks like separate, closely packed buildings. Walking around inside, though, its story unfurls through its interconnected pieces.

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Each room at the Dew Drop Inn Hotel and Lounge in New Orleans is named for a notable musician. This room is named for legendary singer Irma Thomas. (Photo by Chris Granger, The Times-Picayune)

(Photo by Chris Granger The Times-Picayune)
The hotel rooms are stylishly done with a blend of the modern and vintage, each named for people important in the Dew Drop Inn’s history.

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The pool area at the newly renovated Dew Drop Inn Hotel and Lounge in New Orleans on Tuesday, February 27, 2024. (Photo by Chris Granger, The Times-Picayune)

(Photo by Chris Granger The Times-Picayune)
A new addition is a pool and patio with a walk-up bar (collectively known as “the Haven”), an amenity for hotel guests that’s open to others who buy day passes.

In the music hall, the stage faces a low-slung room with the feel of a mid-century lounge, while the bar casts an amber glow through windows facing Lasalle Street.

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Old columns hint to the buildings early history inside the main event space at the Dew Drop Inn Hotel and Lounge in New Orleans on Tuesday, February 27, 2024. (Photo by Chris Granger, The Times-Picayune)

(Photo by Chris Granger The Times-Picayune)
The stage will bring national and local acts, and also a wide variety of performances, as the venue once did in the past. That will include comedy, burlesque and drag shows, talent shows and DJ nights, and brunch entertainment including gospel, drag and R&B brunches.

“We’re looking to do things true to our history,” Doucette said.

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Dew Drop Inn Hotel and Lounge bar director Ian Julian mixes a drink called a Sumpin’ Jumpin’ at the bar inside the renovated venue in New Orleans. (Photo by Chris Granger, The Times-Picayune)

At the bar, beverage director Ian Julian serves a menu of classic cocktails and house signatures.

The kitchen is run by Marilyn Doucette, the proprietor’s aunt. She’s well-known for Meals from the Heart Café, which she’s run as a stand in the French Market since 2009, serving crab cakes and healthier, lower-sodium renditions of Creole soul standards and vegan alternatives.

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The bar inside the Dew Drop Inn Hotel and Lounge in New Orleans. (Photo by Chris Granger, The Times-Picayune)

At Dew Drop Inn, her breakfast, lunch and brunch menus mix those healthier touches with hearty mainstays. Look for dishes like grillades and grits, steak and eggs, breakfast plates and biscuit sandwiches in the morning, and lunch dishes like red beans, gumbo, crab cakes and meat boards sourced from the Creole butcher shop Vaucresson Sausage Co., itself a revival story.

Sacred ground
Black culture is New Orleans culture, yet many of the sites that could psychically manifest that culture through history are gone. That’s one reason Doucette considers the Dew Drop Inn sacred ground.

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An original chair that was in the barbershop that was run by Frank Painia who originally bought what became the Dew Drop Inn. A small room is located in the newly renovated location that pays tribute to the areas history in New Orleans on Tuesday, February 27, 2024. (Photo by Chris Granger, The Times-Picayune)

(Photo by Chris Granger The Times-Picayune)
“A lot of the Dew Drop’s contemporaries were demolished, they’re gone,” Doucette said. “This was almost gone too. We were probably one storm away.”

The rich history and deep potential here, against its tenuous condition, was an impetus to keep pushing through a challenging redevelopment that saw many starts and stops.

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Dew Drop Inn Hotel and Lounge owner Curtis Doucette Jr., left, chats with Jocelyne Ninneman, music and programing director, inside the green room backstage at the renovated venue in New Orleans. (Photo by Chris Granger, The Times-Picayune)

“I needed a lot of grace for this project, and a lot of that goodwill came from the people who came before me,” he said. “I stand on the shoulders of my family.”

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An old radio on a shelf inside the bar at the Dew Drop Inn Hotel and Lounge in New Orleans on Tuesday, February 27, 2024. (Photo by Chris Granger, The Times-Picayune)

(Photo by Chris Granger The Times-Picayune)
The Dew Drop Inn was quietly open in the days leading up to the grand opening events, with a sidewalk board inviting people in. And they’ve been coming, from the ranks of contemporary New Orleans music greats scoping out the space to neighbors sidling up to the bar.

“It’s been amazing to me, you never know who’s going to walk up next or what story they’ll share,” Doucette said.

Dew Drop Inn

2836 Lasalle St., (504) 948-3002

For initial hours, the restaurant and bar are open 7 a.m.-3 p.m. on weekdays and for weekend brunch 8 a.m.-3 p.m. Evening hours for the bar vary with programing night to night, with a mix of free and ticketed events through the week. See schedule updates at dewdropinnnola.com.