The Stanton Building was designed by noted architects Favrot & Livaudais, who also designed the Cotton Exchange and the Napoleon Street Branch Library of the New Orleans Public Library. It has rounded corners and was built of brick, stucco, and glass, and trimmed with silver and black steel and red, yellow, and blue tile panels. Its completely modernistic design was the first of its kind in New Orleans.
In early 1933, Helen Grace Stanton announced that a new building was to be erected on her property at the corner of Carondelet and Common Streets in the Business District. The Stanton Building, a 2-story structure, was built by The George J Glover Company, Inc. and welcomed its first tenants eight months after construction began.
The first tenant was Whaley Merchant Tailors, Inc., a men’s clothing and tailoring business (previously located at 635 Canal St.), who leased part of the second floor in 1933. Two years later, they moved downstairs and occupied the entire ground floor. The upstairs rooms were rented out to various organizations over the following years, including for use as political headquarters for the Home Rule candidates, law offices, a gambling club and an Elks Lodge.
Whaley Tailors operated out of the bottom floor until 1942 and then moved to the 800 block of Common. The business closed in 1958.
When Whaley moved out in 1942, Maison Blanche rented the space for a few months to sell Sugar Bowl tickets. (In what must have been a riveting game, the Fordham Rams beat the Missouri Tigers with a score of 2-0, which is the lowest possible score on which a football game can be won.)
In the spring of 1943, Pan-American World Airways took over the building for five years, using the downstairs as a ticket selling and trip planning area, and upstairs as offices. When Mrs. Stanton died in 1948, Bernard Zoller bought the building and downstairs returned to its original business: selling men’s fashion. Zollers stayed open for about 25 years, until 1978 when Clothing Showroom moved in, maintaining business there until 1982, when Labiche’s clothing store took over for two years.
Between 1984 and 2004, the downstairs space operated as an Italian restaurant, the Bankers Note, a women’s clothing store, a nail salon, and then as a Dunkin Donuts. In 2007, Brother’s Food Mart moved in, and is still there currently, well-known for providing fried chicken to revelers heading out of the French Quarter. The façade retains its unusual rounded shape but has lost most of its decorative features.