Image Courtesy of the Louisiana State Museum

The Old Ursuline Convent building we see today was authorized by King Louis XV of France in 1745 and completed in 1752 or 1753. The building is approximately 160 x 48 feet (about 7,700 square feet per floor). In addition to its use as a convent-school and archbishop's residence, the building has also served as a Catholic boy's school, the city's first public school, and the seat of the Louisiana legislature (1831-1834). The adjoining St. Mary's Church dates from 1845.

The Ursuline nuns moved away from this site in 1824, but the main building has long been known as the Old Ursuline Convent.  The convent is the third of three buildings that the Ursuline Nuns occupied in the French Quarter.  When they arrived from France in 1727, they resided at the Kolly House until 1734 while their first convent was constructed.  They then occupied a convent on the present grounds, but closer to the river, from 1734 to 1752/1753.
 
When the first convent building proved to be poorly constructed, a new building was commissioned by the King.  The convent building we see today was home to the Ursuline nuns from 1752/1753 until 1824, when they moved down river to their Dauphine Street Convent (the site of the present Industrial Canal).
 
In 1968, the Old Ursuline Convent became a Registered National Historic Landmark. "This site possesses exceptional value in commemorating or illustrating the History of the United States," the Department of the Interior plaque on the entrance portico reads. The building has also been described as "a substantial building, of a type seen in Provincial France, reminiscent of the French Renaissance Architecture in Tuscan composite style."
 
The building suffered major damage in Hurricane Katrina. One of the two chimneys facing Chartres Street crashed through the convent roof, severing the sprinkler system. The church roof was lifted slightly from the supporting walls. The roof tiles of the convent and church had to be replaced. The automobile gate facing Chartres Street was torn from its wall moorings.  The buildings were closed for sixteen months during the repairs and reopened in January 2007.