In 1933, shortly after the repeal of the Volstead Act, Tom Caplinger, Harold Barthel, and Mary Collins leased the building at 941 Bourbon Street (at the corner of St. Philip Street) and opened a bar called Café Lafitte. At the time, it was just one of two bars on Bourbon Street, the other being the Old Absinthe House. Contrary to popular belief, the iconic building at 941 Bourbon had never housed a bar before then.
The building, today housing Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop bar, dates to roughly 1772 and was built by a man named Nicolas Touze. It is significant not only architecturally but also because it is one of just a few buildings that survived two great fires that destroyed the city in the late 1700s. The Good Friday fire of 1788 consumed 856 buildings and the fire of 1794 resulted in the loss of 212 buildings.
Caplinger, Collins, and Barthel were accepting of and welcomed their gay clientele, offering them a safe place to drink and socialize. Although the bar could not be classified a “gay bar” as we think of that term today, it was as gay friendly as the times would permit. Collins and Barthel would open another legendary gay bar in 1957, the Galley House, also known as the “Wrinkle Room,” at the corner of Chartres and Toulouse Streets. At Lafitte’s, Mary Collins welcomed patrons enthusiastically and would often run tabs for people who had no cash.
As one might expect, it was a trendy nightspot. Robert Kinney mentions the bar in his classic 1942 book The Bachelor in New Orleans suggesting, “If the bartender is passed out, go behind the bar and mix your own drink!” In a city known for its bars, Café Lafitte was a must stop for visitors and a mecca for celebrities. Creative libations and clever conversation attracted a cross section of the Quarter’s denizens to the bar. Some of the more interesting regulars included restaurateur Count Arnaud, sculptor Enrique Alferez, writers Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote & William March, and photographers Francis Benjamin Johnston & Pops Whitesell.
Caplinger, Bartell, and Collins ran an extremely popular bar that had in twenty years achieved the ambiance and reputation of much older bars from a grander age. Café Lafitte’s popularity stemmed from not only the vibrant cast of characters who frequented the bar but also from the personality of its owners. Caplinger, Bartell, and Collins were genuinely good people—not something that can be said of all bar owners—but that generosity would eventually cost them the bar.
As previously noted, Café Lafitte freely ran bar tabs for those who had no money. Many of these tabs went unpaid and when John Barbe, the owner of the building housing the bar, died, Caplinger, Bartell, and Collins could not afford to purchase the building and Barbe’s estate put the building up for auction. Several hundred people gathered to watch the auction which was held in the bar’s side patio. Caplinger was inside the bar with former manager Tony Devine when the bidding began. The winning bid was $42,500, and when it sold, the bar closed for a few months. When it reopened, under the new ownership of John T. Moore, the bar’s gay clientele was no longer welcome. Caplinger, Bartell, and Collins signed a lease on another building at the other end of the same block, opened another bar and called it Café Lafitte in Exile. Years later, at the original bar, a box full of unpaid bar tabs was found, the sum of which would have easily paid for the building.
Caplinger died in the bar (at 901 Bourbon) after closing time while sleeping on a cot in March of 1956. The New Orleans Item subsequently ran a front-page glowing article chronicling his contributions to the Vieux Carré and every bar on Bourbon Street honored him by briefly dimming their lights and observing a moment of silence. The article includes reactions to his death from French Quarter luminaries such as Harnett Kane, who said, “I never knew a man who tried so hard to hide his kindness” and Ella Brennan, who commented, “He did more for the French Quarter than he ever got credit for. People will realize it more now that he’s gone.” And police officer John O’Rourke, who worked the Bourbon Street beat, said, “Let me tell you he was a type that’ll never be duplicated. Bourbon St. owes a lot of its publicity to Tom. It was he who brought the writers around to all the spots to catch the entertainers.”
