In the Lives of the Mayfair Witches novels, Anne Rice used her own home on First Street in New Orleans' Garden District as the home of the legacy Mayfair Witches. This page of the Parlor explores this house, the historic Brevard-Rice house.
On this page are various photos of the Mayfair House and all things Mayfair that came from www.annerice.com and from an historical survey done in 1964. At that time, the house was owned by Judge Minor Wisdom. The survey included photos of the house from 1964, and also included photos taken around 1933, which would have been the year before Pamela Starr Clapp passed away. Her late husband, Emory Clapp, bought the house from the widower of Elisabeth Brevard, whose father, Albert Hamilton Brevard, had the house built in 1857.
More details can be found about the house's history on House of Patterns, and a closer look at some of the previous owners of 1239 First Street can be found on First Street Family Gallery.
Over the years, other properties formerly owned by Anne Rice have incorrectly been identified as the home of the Mayfair Witches in the novels. For the AMC series, a house similar to the Brevard-Rice house was used as the Mayfair Witches house. See the bottom section, NOT the Mayfair Witches House, for an overview of the other properties.
Come Into My Parlor...
The original Black and white images I have always had on the Parlor 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.
Also included here are photos of the First Street house from Anne Rice dot com, which give us a look at the house as it appeared when she owned it and wrote the Mayfair Witches novels in it. She owned the house from about 1989 to 2004.
The Double Parlor
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...
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.
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.
Deirdre's World
The Side Porch
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
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.
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.
The Brevard-Rice House
And just in case you missed it... THIS house in the image to the left is the Mayfair Witches house of the novels. It is the Brevard-Rice house at 1239 First Street in New Orleans' Garden District. Let's start here.
I do not know the reason Anne Rice's former home at 1239 First Street was unavailable for use in the series. There is plenty to document that it is indeed the house used in the Lives of the Mayfair Witches as the home of the legacy Mayfair Witches.
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 November 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.
Above are the title pages of the hard cover and Trade editions of The Witching Hour. The images of the title pages and copyright page of the first edition come from Bookshop Apocalypse. The images of the house on both the title pages of the first edition.
The cover of the May 1993 Mass Market edition do make it clear Anne Rice did indeed use her home on First Street in New Orleans' Garden District as the home of the Mayfair Witches.
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. More about the Soria-Creel house here.
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.
We Went There: St. Elizabeth’s Chapel Converted Into a Luxury Condo in New Orleans ~ By Craig Donofrio, Realtor.com, May 1, 2015
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!
Anne Rice’s Doll Auction: Is it a stake through her heart? ~ by Stephanie Finnegan, DOLLS Magazine, July 19, 2010
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: