Named for Andrew Higgins — the New Orleans boat builder whose Higgins landing craft the Allies used to storm the beaches of Normandy — this hotel carries a weight of historical obligation that most hospitality projects never have to reckon with. The Higgins Hotel, which sits directly adjacent to the National WWII Museum in New Orleans' Arts District, was purpose-built in 2019 as a companion property to that institution, designed by architect Eric Colbert with interiors by the New Orleans firm Malone Maxwell Borson Architects. The ten-story building's Art Deco-inflected facade — limestone cladding, vertical fins of illuminated white paneling, and a crown element that recalls 1930s setback towers — establishes a civic register appropriate to its neighbor. Inside, the 230 rooms carry the wartime reference lightly but consistently: navy and cream bed runners embroidered with WWII, brass torchiere floor lamps suggesting officer's quarters, and patterned carpets in the deep indigo and red of military dress uniforms. Dark-stained walnut case goods with brass ring pulls anchor the rooms against floor-to-ceiling windows framing either the Mississippi River bridge or the downtown skyline. The restaurant Café Normandie works a copper-pressed ceiling above fleur-de-lis upholstered dining chairs and navy banquettes — New Orleans and Normandy folded into one room. Above it all, the rooftop bar shifts register entirely into corrugated metal, exposed pipework, and vintage wooden propellers, the New Orleans skyline spread wide beyond open industrial-framed windows.

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