The Warbler hotel opens 58 Jazz Age rooms and a rooftop pool in New Orleans

The Warbler, a new hotel in New Orleans, has been welcoming its first guests since mid-October 2026 at 1923 St. Charles Avenue, in the Garden District. This independent 58-room boutique hotel, decorated in the spirit of the 1920s, brings together a martini bar, a café and a rooftop pool, all created with the team behind Cure, the James Beard Award-winning bar.

☰Contents

1. From 26-year café to six-storey hotel
2. 58 rooms, from 28 to 140 m²
3. The Jazz Age interiors of Jamie Bush + Co.
4. Martinis and seafood at Mildred’s
5. A rooftop pool above the oak trees
6. The Garden District by streetcar, no resort fee

From 26-year café to six-storey hotel

The hotel stands on the site of the Trolley Stop Cafe, a St. Charles Avenue diner that served locals and visitors for 26 years. The developer is Verdad, a New Orleans and Dallas property firm founded in 2009, for which this is a first hotel; operations have been entrusted to Lark, a boutique hotel specialist. In the opening announcement of 20 October 2026, Verdad principal Joe Mann describes The Warbler as a place from which visitors can experience New Orleans from a genuine neighbourhood pied-à-terre.

The name comes from the magnolia warbler, a small songbird drawn by John James Audubon in 1821. The hotel also honours the memory of “Henry”, whose family ran the Terry & Juden shirtmaker on Carondelet Street for 103 years.

58 rooms, from 28 to 140 m²

The range starts with the Classic King (28 to 30 m²) and moves through the Premium King, the Double Queen and the Studio King (43 m²). The four suites have one, two or three bedrooms; the largest, “The Henry”, measures 140 m² and sleeps up to eight. In the rooms: Italian Bellino linens, robes hand-woven by local artisan Lekha, Costa Brazil products, a minibar stocked by the Meyer Provisions grocery and a Tivoli speaker.

The Jazz Age interiors of Jamie Bush + Co.

The architecture is by EskewDumezRipple, winner of the AIA Architecture Firm Award in 2014. The interiors are by Los Angeles studio Jamie Bush + Co., whose founder features on the AD100 list, with Sweet Olive Co. as consultant and DM Steib managing the build. The décor draws on the Jazz Age of the 1920s and on Streamline Moderne, the rounded-line style of the 1930s; a ceramic mural by local artist Anna Koeferl completes the picture.

Martinis and seafood at Mildred’s

The food and drink were developed with CureCo, the company of Neal Bodenheimer and Kirk Estopinal, the team behind Cure, and with chef Andrew Zimmerman of Sepia, a Michelin-starred restaurant in Chicago. On the ground floor, Mildred’s is both a martini bar and a seafood restaurant with European and Iberian influences: tortilla española, redfish (a local fish) a la plancha, Inverted Martini. It serves breakfast from 7am to 11am, the bar from 3pm to 11pm and dinner from 5pm to 10pm. Next door, Milly’s café opens from 6.30am to 3pm with coffee roasted in the city by Cherry Coffee.

A rooftop pool above the oak trees

On the roof, Upstairs pairs a bar with a Balearic-inspired pool, above the great oaks of St. Charles Avenue. The pool is reserved for hotel guests from 9am to 10pm, plus a handful of day passes sold at $125, including $75 of food and drink; the bar, meanwhile, opens to the public from 4pm. The roof can be hired privately for up to 150 guests.

The Garden District by streetcar, no resort fee

The hotel has neither a spa nor a gym: access to the gym at Spyre, a neighbouring wellness centre, is complimentary, with treatments charged separately. Bikes and streetcar passes are lent to guests, room service runs from 7am to 10pm, and no resort fee (the flat surcharge common in the United States) is added. The Mardi Gras parade passes in front of the hotel, and rooms for Mardi Gras 2027 are already on sale.

To mark the opening, the “Founders Rate” takes 20% off direct bookings until 24 December 2026. In the same city, the Fairmont New Orleans will open on 2 November with 250 rooms. More new American hotels with character: The Nora in West Palm Beach and the Lucile, set in a 1931 church in Los Angeles.