The Hermann-Grima House

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The Hermann-Grima house at 820 St. Louis Street is a Federal-style mansion built in 1831 for Samuel Hermann, a German-born immigrant who moved to New Orleans in 1810. The lot on which it stands has a developmental history going back to at least 1728. The Christian Woman’s Exchange has owned the house since 1924, and it has in the past shown great dedication to preserving the house and supporting extensive archaeological research at the site. In 1974, a team of students from the University of New Orleans excavated a part of the kitchen. Since then, the site has been investigated seven times, each one expanding on the previous work. Much of this work was done in conjunction with UNO field schools, often aimed at exploring specific issues of site and building chronology and function. Archaeological preservation is very good at the site, especially in the courtyard, the result of the brick flagstone paving installed by Mr. Hermann, which effectively sealed and preserved the subsurface stratigraphy dating from 1831 back to colonial times. The recovered remains have been used to inform the interpretation and furnishings of the historic house. The remains from the eighteenth-century levels, while broadly presented in a series of technical reports, still possess untapped research potential for the study of Colonial New Orleans.