If you’re the sort that travels with a blacklight, white inspection gloves, and your own duvet, you’ll hate this place.
If you like exceptional atmosphere and an architectural connection to the past in a city that is itself a faded beauty, you can’t do better.
There are inconveniences; the sole elevator was designed when Americans didn’t consume a whole ox for breakfast. Repairs to cosmetic things like thresholds or mirror-placements are often home-made and imprecise while repairs to architecture and structure are exact.
The carpet might be a bit stained and the place dusty and the valet parking a whirlwind of chaos. There’s no room service.
But we were delighted with the preservation of Creole history. Furniture and decor are authentic or at least plausibly early 19th century. The place rambles through galleries, parlors, multiple courtyards, balconies, and corridors. A pair of cats keep watch downstairs. (I’m not kidding. There are hotel cats.)
Olivier House is a family operation, not regulated down to the soap placement by some corporation. The staff know and love New Orleans, the house, and some history.