On YouTube
The URL above, which you may copy and paste into your browser, will take you to a YouTube playlist of
videos about the house at 1239 First Street in New Orleans. The image is from the video that has been embedded in this spot
for years and is now included in the playlist.
The video that the thumbnail image you see above is from a realtor's video of the house. It was recommended to me by Richie
in Philadelphia. It has other shots of the house and grounds not seen in the photos. Thank you, Richie!!
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Stella's Dance Floor...
In this room is where Stella was shot to death, where Rowan declares her decision to claim the house and
the legacy, where her wedding reception is held, and where she willingly comes to Lasher for the first time...
The Double Parlor
 1239 First
Street, New Orleans 1964
 The Keyhole Doorway
in 1964
 The Double Parlor in
1964
 The Double Parlor in
1964
 The Double Parlor in
1933
 The Double Parlor in
1933
I've added color to the photos via Playback, and the interior shots may or may not represent the colors
in the room in those two time periods.
The exterior photos came out beautifully, I think! Colorization still had the effect of bringing out some of the details
of the rooms, I think. I wonder if there were more photos taken at those two times...
I am researching the photo credits for the older photos. Again, if they are copyrighted or if I have misused them in any
way, please let me know.
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Drowning Pool
The pool that Stella had installed during the "Roaring Twenties". She once filled it with champagne for
one of her wild parties. When Rowan returns sixty years later, the pool is a dank, murky swamp that defies restoration.
However, Michael Curry's restoration project reveals that it is quite intact, and Michael himself has a vision of ghostly
party guests with a panicked Arthur Langtry shouting, "Come away from there, man!" just months before he nearly drowns - for
the second time - in this pool.
The Swimming Pool
 Stella's Pool
 The Pool
 The Balustrade
Around the Pool
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A Gathering of Family...
In this room is where Rowan has her "interview" with Carlotta Mayfair, who taunts and provokes Rowan into
killing her, where Rowan sees the trees outside moving by Lasher's will, and where family meetings are convened in the First
Street house after Rowan's disappearance.
The Dining Room
 The Dining Room
 The Dining Room 1964
 -
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Deirdre's World
The top of this side porch is where Evelyn Mayfair (Ancient Evelyn by the time of Lasher) climbs to Julien's
attic room to couple with him, and from where Antha is pushed to her death by an enraged Carlotta. From 1976 to 1989, the
first floor deck is where Deirdre (Antha's daughter, Stella's granddaughter, and the mother of Rowan Mayfair) languishes in
a rocking chair, unable to defend herself or her daughter against Lasher. Nor does she seem to want to. In a vision of Deirdre's
thoughts, she seems to be glad for Lasher's company during her convalescence. According to Carlotta, she "writhed like a
cat" under Lasher's touch despite being otherwise comatose from the Thorazine.
The steps in the photo are the steps Michael Curry cleared from the brush and overgrowth during the restoration of the home,
proving that the side porch was originally designed to be open (see the pictures of the plans).
Deirdre's Oak was where Rowan's mother would swing and play with Lasher as a child, and it was she who carved the name "Lasher"
into the trunk of the massive oak tree. Note the garconniere (sic?) in the background in one of the photos.
Deirdre's Oak
 Tree In the First
Street Garden
 Deirdre's Oak
 Deirdre's Oak
The Side Porch
 The Side Porch In
the 1930s
 The Upper
Window of the Side Porch
 The Side Porch
as it appears today
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History In Color
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Original B&W Gallery
The original images I have always had on the Parlor have been reorganized into their own photo gallery
here. These are by far some of the most well known and widely available images of the Brevard Rice house. They were taken
in 1933 and in 1964. Update: I did a little deeper a dive on the Library of Congress website, which has more information
regarding the historical photos. The photos taken in or about 1933 are identified as having been from the collection of Samuel
J. Wilson, and the photos taken in the fall of 1964 were taken by photographer Dan Leyrer. To learn more, you can access
the Library of Congress's photo gallery that includes all 9 photos, and then open each one to see details here: https://www.loc.gov/resource/hhh.la0063.photos?st=gallery.
 The Double Parlor in
1964
 Double Parlor Entrance
1964
 Double Parlor Entrance
1964
 The Double Parlor 1964
 The Double Parlor
in the 1930s
 The Double Parlor
in the 1930s
 The Dining Room 1964
 The Side Porch in
the 1930s
-
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NOT the Mayfair Witches House
In the novels, anyway.
Anne Rice owned a number of properties when she lived and worked in New Orleans after returning in or around 1988. The properties
she owned and some of the features and items in them would make appearances in her novels. In the Lives of the Mayfair
Witches series, like her other novels, more than one property she owned was used as a setting. Because she owned more
than one house in New Orleans, this has, no doubt, led to some of the confusion as to which house was used as a particular
house in the novels. This is why the Parlor has recently been hoping to clear up some of the confusion by providing more
information on the properties.
First, let's begin with the Mayfair Witches house in the novels versus the
house used for the AMC series. I do not know the reason Anne Rice's former home at 1239 First Street (shown here in a more
recent photograph) was unavailable for use in the series. What I can say is that the house, Anne Rice's primary residence
in New Orleans at the time The Witching Hour was published, is the one used as the Mayfair Witches house in the novels.
Specifically, the house that is part of the Legacy, handed down to each Designee of the Legacy, from mother to daughter, since
Katherine Mayfair had the house constructed and added to the Legacy. This house, at 1239 First Street in the Garden District,
is the house that is the subject of the page of the Parlor you are on at the moment.
If you look at the title pages of both the first edition hardcover of The Witching Hour from December 1990 and the
title page of the first Trade edition from November 1991, you will see a sketch of the Mayfair house across both pages. It
is detailed enough that it is very clear Anne Rice did indeed use her own home (at the time) on First Street as the house
Rowan Mayfair inherits upon the death of her mother, Deirdre Mayfair.
The Soria-Creel House
It is the Soria-Creel house, which was not a property owned by Anne Rice, that
was used in the AMC series. Shown here is a photograph of the Soria-Creel house that was taken from an angle the First Street
house has often been photographed from.
The house and grounds appear to have been prepared for filming, but see if you can find the differences in architectural features
of the two houses.
The Parlor has removed the Soria-Creel House page due to it being abused. I've never found it necessary to remove a page
of the Parlor due to it being abused before, and I don't want to have to do it again.
I might restore the Soria-Creel house page at a later point, but I haven't gotten that far yet. I'll keep it in mind, though.
The Rouse-Harp-Mitchell-Kirkpatrick House
This house, referred to in the Lives of the Mayfair Witches novels as
the Amelia Street house, at 3711 St. Charles Avenue, was owned by Anne Rice at one point. This house has been referred to
as the "Mayfair Witches house" at various points, which is true--partly.
The Mayfairs who built and lived in this particular house in the novels certainly include Mayfair witches, most notably Mona
Mayfair. However, this was not the house built by Katherine Mayfair and included in the Legacy, which was handed down from
mother to daughter. This was the house built by the descendants of Augustin Mayfair, who was killed in a pistol duel with
(and by) Julien Mayfair. The house is the "Fontevrault outpost" because it was where the Mayfairs who came from the plantation,
Fontevrault, went when the plantation was no longer...above water.
For more discussion on the Mayfairs of Amelia Street and Fontevrault, you will find interesting tidbits (and photos) on this
page of the Parlor:
Amelia Street - The Fontevrault Outpost
St. Elizabeth's Orphanage
Another house that has occasionally been mistakenly identified as the Mayfair
Witches house is this particular piece of real estate, St. Elizabeth's, a former orphanage and Catholic girls' school at 1314
Napoleon Ave. Anne Rice did own it at one point and used it to house her extraordinary doll collection.
Random tidbit: my great-grandmother also collected dolls. I think she would
have loved this!
Where this doll collection does figure into the Lives of the Mayfair Witches is in the third novel, Taltos.
In particular, the Bru doll.
If I'm not mistaken, in that cabinet just right of the center of this image are dolls of Lestat, Louis and Claudia! Which
is also noteworthy as, if I recall correctly, St. Elizabeth's, in real life a former orphanage (or the site of one), appears
in the Vampire Chronicles as a property owned by Lestat.
However, it is not a property used as the home of the Mayfair Witches.
To see more New Orleans architecture similar to these properties and to 1239 First Street, there is an
overview of a selection of properties, including other homes that have also been mistaken for the Mayfair Witches house, on
this page of the Parlor:
Exploring New Orleans Architecture
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You Need to Know...
When Anne Rice's Mayfair Witches first premiered on AMC in January 2023, there was a great deal of interest
in its filming locations. One thing that was of great interest is why the house used as the New Orleans home of the Mayfair
Witches looked like Anne Rice's former residence.
One article that explored this appeared on Distractify, and in it, a post Anne Rice made on her Facebook page in 2014 was
explored. You may copy and paste the URL below to read the article:
Was 'Mayfair Witches' Filmed in Anne Rice's Hometown of New Orleans? Let's Investigate
https://www.distractify.com/p/mayfair-witches-filming-locations
This is the Facebook post:
And this is the same page. At the time, this website still had its former domain, www.comeintomyparlor.com.
I have always run the website on this webhost, however. For financial reasons, I was simply unable to continue to keep it
on its former domain. If you do a Google search of "mayfair witches house", this page will come up under its navigation menu
title, Inside First Street. Right under the vague Lycos host name I've been trying to figure out how to fix, but so far,
have not been able to.
Before I overhauled the website to the way it appears today, I did add the pages to the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.
Copy and paste this URL to open the archived page on Wayback Machine): https://web.archive.org/web/20230205064803/https%3A%2F%2Fmayfair95.tripod.com%2Fid4.html
And on this page of the Parlor, you'll find a directory of the pages archived on Wayback Machine at the
time of its overhaul in February 2023:
The Parlor on Wayback Machine
I've never contacted Distractify to let them know that actually, the website is and always has been operational,
but no longer under its former domain. I don't know why not, since the older script written by Anne Rice of The Witching
Hour that appears on Site Resources and Bibliography was added after I obtained permission from Anne Rice to add it.
However, it's worth noting that the article was on the right track. Anne Rice did indeed use her own former home as the home
of the Mayfair Witches in her Lives of the Mayfair Witches series. The home of the Designee of the Legacy, that is.
In fact, the first novel, The Witching Hour, gives a very detailed description of the house and incorporates those
details into the story.
I do not know the reason the actual house, known as the Brevard-Rice house, was not used for the AMC series. The house that
was used, the Soria-Creel house, does have a lot of the same architectural features that are prevalent in a lot of Garden
District houses built in the style of the Brevard-Rice house. Also consider that for many decades, the Mayfair house would
have had this air of overgrown decay surrounding it, since the garden as a whole seemed to be about to swallow the entire
house and grounds, but seemed to be stopped only by the flowers that continued to bloom. And Lasher did like to make sure
there were flowers anywhere and everywhere.
That is a detail I think the show did REALLY well. Even the opening scenes show an old fountain, completely green but still
with a pink water lily and the fountain still dripping with water...very much like the swampy, choked ruin of Stella Mayfair's
swimming pool, where the fountains still inexplicably streamed water into it...
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HOUSE RULE: This is a private residence. For purposes of privacy, the general rule is that
the names of current and previous owners will not be listed here strictly because they did or do live there. The only
exceptions are, of course, Anne Rice, those whose names appear in the actual construction history of the house, and, if widely
available, media resources that name them in conjunction with whatever they're reporting on.
If
you do happen to go on a tour of New Orleans' Garden District and one of the stops is this house, please use your good manners
by remaining on your side of the property line and by not hassling or otherwise disturbing the occupants. It is also strongly
advised, for your safety, that you do not go alone. Thank you.
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