Lafayette Square bar drew stars from Huey Long to Babe Ruth

John Gentilich tends bar at the Marble Hall on Lafayette Street in a newspaper image from microfilm published in The Times-Picayune in December 1967. The massive mahogany bar that dominated the Marble Hall is said to have been acquired from the old Flanders Bar on Carondelet Street shortly after the Civil War.

Don’t worry. You’re not losing your marbles.

If you read last week’s column on John P. Marcev’s Marble Hall Branch bar and restaurant on North Rampart Street and thought, “Wait? Rampart Street?,” you’re not alone.

Many people remember the Marble Hall — but they remember it being on Lafayette Square, next to Gallier Hall. That includes reader Tom Bennett, who wrote:

“In the 1950s and ’60s, my dad, Charlie Bennett, frequented a bar called Marble Hall on Lafayette Street on the side of Gallier Hall. Dad was a photographer for the newspaper and, as you know, the paper was located right across St. Charles Avenue on Lafayette Square.

“Marble Hall was always packed with politicians, City Hall workers, press and CBD businessmen.”

An ad published in The Daily Picayune of June 23, 1854, touts the Marble Hall restaurant across Hevia Street from City Hall. Hevia would later be named Lafayette Street, and the Marble Hall would continue to operate for another 120-plus years.

As it turns out, Bennett’s memories — and those of everyone else who remembers the Marble Hall as a political hot spot on Lafayette Square — are spot-on.

That Marble Hall was the original Marble Hall, and it was legendary, operating for at least 125 years at 720 Lafayette St. and serving in its 20th-century heyday as a beacon to thirsty reporters and prominent politicos.

Even Babe Ruth, the bambino himself, is said to have bent an elbow at the bar when the New York Yankees were training in town in the 1920s.

The exact opening date of the original Marble Hall is unclear, although it was around as early as 1854, as evidenced by an ad published in The Daily Picayune in June of that year.

Around 1900, a Croatian immigrant named John Gentilich reportedly bought it. The Marble Hall would remain in the hands of the Gentilich family for the next 60-plus years. It was on their watch that it would make its name.

It was also on their watch that a family member, Nick Gentilich, struck out on his own, exporting the concept to Rampart Street and opening the Marble Hall Branch there around 1920. As discussed in this space last week, he would later sell it to fellow Croatian immigrant John P. Marcev, whose family operated it until the 1950s.

Meanwhile, the Gentilich family continued running the original Marble Hall on Lafayette Street as it evolved into both a second City Hall and a second newsroom for Picayune reporters.

Dominating the place was an enormous 21-foot solid mahogany bar said to have been acquired from Flanders Bar on Carondelet Street shortly after the Civil War — and which the Gentiliches proudly touted as “the oldest bar back in New Orleans.”

In addition to a brass-trimmed central mirror, it included a prominent relief panel depicting a scene of charioteers.

“It’s just a few steps from municipal headquarters to the famed Marble Hall and New Orleans’ city workers have worn a path between these two points,” the Gentiliches boasted in a 1937 ad picturing then-owner John P. Gentilich behind that bar.

“I think every mayor of New Orleans for 75 to 100 years has patronized this bar,” Gentilich said years later in a newspaper interview.

Governors came, too, from Huey P. Long and Earl K. Long to Jimmy Davis and John McKeithen.

Also helping its reputation — aside from the hooch and the hobnobbing — was the presence of John P. Gentilich, who was, by all accounts, a prince of a guy.

An oft-repeated story about him, which varies slightly depending on who’s telling it, involves a customer who came in at Christmastime and picked up two bottles of whiskey on credit. He didn’t return until the next year, and he still hadn’t paid up, so Johnny decided to teach him a lesson — by letting him have only one additional bottle on credit.

When he came back a third year, Gentilich declared he would get no more whiskey until he paid for the three previous bottles.

The customer left empty-handed and never came back, prompting Gentilich — the old softie — to wonder out loud if he had been too hard on the guy.

The beginning of the end for the Marble Hall came in May 1957, when City Hall moved from Gallier Hall to new digs on Duncan Plaza. A sizable portion of the bar’s clientele moved with it.

“And when The Times-Picayune goes …,” Gentilich prophesized in a story published in September 1967.

Two months later, Gentilich retired and the bar closed for good.

“An era ended here Friday night,” read the first sentence in The Times-Picayune’s coverage of the Marble Hall’s last call.

The building housing it is long gone, but that magnificent bar was sold to the Royal Sonesta, where it was installed as an oyster bar.

Sources: The Times-Picayune archives.

Know of a New Orleans building worth profiling in this column, or just curious about one? Contact Mike Scott at [email protected].

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