Check your screen to see the full scale of this ten-story, cream-colored stone tower, capped with a flat roofline and distinctive, rounded Romanesque arches along the upper floor. Built in 1927 as the luxurious Heidelberg Hotel, this skyscraper began as a casual sketch on a cocktail napkin by architect Edward F. Neild. His audacious ambition was to create a grand centerpiece for the capital city, designing it in a Romanesque style, which mimics the heavy stone walls and semi-circular arches of medieval Europe.
This lavish building quickly became the ultimate personal playground for Louisiana's most infamous political titan, the legendary Huey P. Long. He kept a sprawling three-bedroom suite on the mezzanine floor. To dodge the relentless press, he frequently slipped through a massive underground tunnel connecting the Heidelberg to a sister hotel across the street. Adorned with ornate mosaic tiles and dubbed Peacock Alley, this subterranean passageway was originally built just to move room service carts out of sight. Today, the space has been reborn as a Prohibition-style speakeasy, an illicit hidden bar where modern guests need a secret password sent via text message to get inside.
But the real drama unfolded upstairs. In 1931, this hotel was transformed into a bizarre battleground. After being elected to the United States Senate, Long flat-out refused to surrender his role as governor. Infuriated, Lieutenant Governor Paul Cyr declared himself the rightful executive and set up a rogue, shadow government right here inside the Heidelberg. For a brief, wild moment, this hotel actually served as the temporary State Capitol. Long eventually had Cyr evicted, but the chaos did not end there. During a later impeachment threat, his political enemies rented out an entire floor as a command post while Long directed his counter-attacks from a suite just a few floors away.
The building sat abandoned for twenty years before reopening in 2006, a perfect example of how this city is always reinventing itself, constructing its brilliant modern chapters right on top of its own phantom past. And the past here might literally be phantoms. The modern hotel is strictly smoke-free, yet housekeepers on the tenth floor frequently report sudden, thick whiffs of phantom cigar smoke. Some even claim to see an apparition in a long coat and bucket hat, pacing the halls exactly as the old governor used to do.
Picture the electric tension in these elegant lobbies back in 1931. What would it actually feel like to watch a glamorous luxury hotel morph into a cutthroat war room for control of an entire state? Let us head toward the riverfront now to uncover the remnants of the heavy railroad era, as we make our way to the Baton Rouge station, just a three-minute walk away.
