Walter Patrolia Beer Parlor — Cigars · Cigarettes · Tobacco
For years this building was Smitty’s Bar, its original weatherboards covered in 1960s tiles. Melvin started taking the tiles off, and that sign was underneath. When Marc took over, the old façade had only begun to show. He has been bringing it back ever since.
Down in the corner of the red, in letters you have to stand close to read, it says June 1941: six months before Pearl Harbor.
The phone number agrees. CR. 1443 belongs to the CRescent exchange, which New Orleans used from 1928 until it was retired in 1957. (New Orleans City Archives)
Walter Patrolia ran a beer parlor here long before us. Marc keeps restoring his sign because so many people stop for it. It has been photographed thousands of times by tourists and locals, and it has turned up in magazines and on television. When the American Pickers crew came through filming old signs, they filmed ours.
So the wall is still selling beer to people who walked past it generations ago.
The wall on Burgundy Street.
Three generations. One New Orleans original.
Melvin Hoerner was a New Orleans character. He went to Jesuit High School, then into the U.S. Marine Corps as an infantryman, and came home to build his own way as a self-made entrepreneur in the bar business. WWL’s Frank Davis put him on television, and the caption called him a historic tavern owner. We would have told you the same thing. A couple of years before he died, he bought Marie’s.
Anyone who knew him will tell you he was larger than life. When he died, people made signs of his sayings, and two still hang above the bar: “Talking to your daddy” and “Just looking for a little affection.” Ask about them. His Marine Corps flag, presented to Marc at Melvin’s burial with military honors, hangs inside too, along with photographs from his time in the Marines.
“My dad taught me to be caring to the neighborhood and help others when I could.”
Marc Hoerner Sr.
When Melvin died in April 2011, his son Marc took the bar over the same night. Marc is a Marine too, and he runs Marie’s the way you’d expect one to.
He turned the place around. He painted the whole building, inside and out, and redid the bathrooms. He has kept a very old building in the Marigny’s historic district structurally sound and true to what it was, and he keeps restoring the sign on the wall so it’s still there for the next person who stops to take a picture. As Marc tells it, the Marigny is one of the oldest neighborhoods in New Orleans, full of the city’s old architecture and a mix of cultures built up over many years. He means to keep Marie’s part of that.
What he won’t touch is just as important.
“I refuse to change the old pictures on the walls and the happy hour and inexpensive drink prices.”
Marc Hoerner Sr.
Marc’s son is the third. He poured drinks here in college and ran the kitchen himself during Covid. He still turns up to help.
Who drinks here
A lot of the old regulars, people who lived in this neighborhood their whole lives, have passed on. Newer ones have come in behind them, a little younger. Some are cab drivers who drive Ubers now.
“There are all types that come: old, young, gay, straight, rich, and poor.”
Marc Hoerner Sr.
Brass on the pool table.
There’s a burger window in the back.
The building has a small, old-time kitchen downstairs. Marc rebuilt it from the ground up just before Covid. It was sitting closed when Chad Barlow came looking for a place to start.
Since 2022 it has been his: Original Slap Burger, his own business in our kitchen. Burgers, hot sausage po’ boys, chicken tenders.
They take cards. The bar is cash only, with an ATM inside. They don’t pour drinks; that part is still us.
