Low, brick, and easy to miss, Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop is believed to be the oldest bar in the United States, a structure that has survived two and a half centuries of New Orleans history largely by not calling too much attention to itself. The building dates to somewhere between 1722 and 1732, making it one of the oldest surviving structures in the French Quarter, built in the briquette-entre-poteaux technique — bricks set between wooden posts — that was standard in French colonial Louisiana before the great fires. The legend attached to this bar involves the pirate brothers Jean and Pierre Lafitte, who supposedly used the blacksmith shop as a front for their smuggling and privateering operations in the early nineteenth century.
Whether the Lafitte brothers actually operated from here is historically uncertain, but the association is permanently embedded in the bar's identity. What is certain is that Jean Lafitte's privateer fleet played a decisive role at the Battle of New Orleans in 1815, when Lafitte and his men provided artillery expertise and powder that helped Andrew Jackson defeat the British. The bar is famously dark inside — no windows let in natural light — and is lit by candles.
The drinks are strong, the atmosphere is thick with age, and the neighborhood cats sometimes wander through. Step inside; the candles do the rest.