The Historic New Orleans Collection is turning 60 this year, and the institution is marking the occasion with a gala rather than a quiet open house. Tickets to Cheers to 60 Years! start at $125, with the main event set for 7 p.m. on October 29 at the Collection's Royal Street campus, featuring cocktails, cuisine, live music and a silent auction. An exclusive patron party kicks off an hour earlier, at 6 p.m.
The celebration caps a five-year stretch during which the Collection quietly expanded its presence in the Quarter. The nonprofit's footprint now includes 14 properties across the neighborhood, anchored by the flagship complex at 533 Royal Street and the Williams Research Center on Chartres Street. President and CEO Daniel Hammer said the institution remains committed to preserving the past for current and future generations, even as it keeps growing.
A Decade of Building, Not Just Collecting
The scale of that growth becomes clearer when you trace the individual purchases. In 2019, the Collection opened a 38,000-square-foot exhibition facility at 520 Royal Street, built inside the restored 1816 Seignouret-Brulatour Building and a new Tricentennial Wing — a structure that had spent decades as the WDSU-TV broadcast facility until 1997, according to Biz New Orleans. Hammer became the Collection's seventh president and CEO that same July, shortly after that space opened, making him the first leader in the foundation's history to have grown up in a family with generational New Orleans roots.
Then, in December 2023, the Collection purchased and renovated the former K-Paul's Louisiana Kitchen building at 416 Chartres Street. The three-story, 12,000-square-foot structure, built in 1834, now houses exhibition preparation and other behind-the-scenes workspaces, and it sits adjacent to the Williams Research Center. Those two acquisitions bracket the flagship 533 Royal Street complex, which the Collection is currently renovating as part of a $28 million capital campaign aimed at expanding public accessibility across seven historic buildings and four courtyards, per the Louisiana State Legislature.
Roots Older Than the French Quarter's Fires
Altogether, the Collection's French Quarter real estate spans more than 125,000 square feet, according to Biz New Orleans. The Collection's campus includes the Jean François Merieult House at 533 Royal Street, per the Historical Marker Database.
The campus carries literary history too. General and Mrs. L. Kemper Williams established the Historic New Orleans Collection in 1966.
Beyond the Walls: Research and Community Ties
The Williams Research Center, opened in January 1996 inside a restored 1915 Beaux-Arts former municipal courthouse at 410 Chartres Street, houses roughly 35,000 library items and more than 300,000 photographs, prints, drawings and paintings, according to FrenchQuarter.com. Its reading room occupies the building's former courtroom. The Collection describes itself as a museum, research center, publisher and cultural institution serving both New Orleans and the wider Gulf South, and it says it holds the world's largest repository of materials related to the region.
That mission has expanded well beyond glass display cases. Through its Losing Ground project, the Collection preserves oral histories from Gulf Coast communities confronting coastal erosion, severe weather and climate displacement, as Hoodline previously reported. The Collection has also mounted an exhibition related to the American Revolution.
Free Access Amid the Expansion
Despite the scale of its real estate portfolio, the Collection maintains that its core museum exhibitions, rare manuscripts, photography collections and public programs remain free to the public. It also redesigned the Vieux Carré Survey database, making architectural history instantly accessible online, and continues to mount award-winning exhibitions addressing complex historical narratives. Bonnie Boyd, chair of the Collection's board of directors, said the institution continues to innovate while staying true to its founding vision.
More than 100,000 visitors came through the Collection's doors last year, and the organization has spent the last five years improving its physical campus, launching new programming and increasing archive accessibility. Cheers to 60 Years! is presented by Ryan Gootee General Contractors and will take place at the Collection's Royal Street campus on October 29, closing out six decades that began with General and Mrs. L. Kemper Williams's 1966 founding and now stretch across 14 properties in the heart of the French Quarter.
