Buggy drivers frequently stop in front of the Beauregard-Keyes House museum on Chartres Street and spin fantastic yarns of nighttime haunts, war heroes, novelists, Mafia shoot-outs, reclusive chess players and even a macaroni factory. But unlike buggy tales told about other Quarter landmarks, those about the Beauregard-Keyes House are usually true.

The house was built in 1826 by successful auctioneer Joseph Le Carpentier, who reportedly started his business by selling stolen goods for pirate Jean Lafitte. Le Carpentier bought property from the Ursuline nuns, then hired an architect and signed contracts for the construction of a French Colonial house. The original plans, now on file at the New Orleans Notarial Archives, called for a ground-level basement (the rez de chaussee), an upper story or premiere etage with galleries across the front and rear, a hall-free floor plan and cabinets or small rooms at each end of the rear gallery with a loggia between.

But while the house was being planned, architectural fashion was changing. After a key contractor failed to provide a surety bond, a year-long delay in construction ensued, leading Le Carpentier to reconsider his original plans and hire architect Francois Correjolles to modify them. Correjolles was attuned to emerging American taste for the Federal style and used it to make his imprint on the project. The home has a facade that borrows Roman elements and features hefty columns, a symmetrical arrangement of windows and doors, a dramatic portico and a main entry opening onto a central hallway. One source describes the house as "an architectural puzzle -- not quite French and not quite American."

The Le Carpentier family produced the first celebrity to be associated with the house: chess prodigy Paul Morphy. Morphy was born in the 1830s, one of four children of Le Carpentier's daughter Thelcide and her husband, Alonzo Morphy (later a Louisiana supreme court judge). By 1859, Paul Morphy had conquered all American and European challengers and won international fame, only to retire from chess and live out his life in seclusion in New Orleans.

Swiss Consul John A. Merle bought the house from the Le Carpentiers. Merle's wife, Anais Philippon Merle, installed a formal parterre garden adjacent to the residence and surrounded by a brick wall. Later, Josephine Laveau Trudeau, widow of Creole merchant Manuel Andry, bought the property at auction when it was sold to satisfy Merle's debts, and continued development of the garden.

In 1865, the Andry estate sold the property to grocer Dominique Lanata, who bought it as a rental. His most notable tenant was Confederate Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard, who lived in the house from 1865 to 1868 while re-establishing himself in business after the Civil War and rising to the post of president of the New Orleans, Jackson and Great Northern Railroad. In today's house museum, the Beauregard chamber contains furnishings used by Beauregard.

The extended Lanata family held onto the house until 1904, when they sold it to Sicilian Corrado Giacona, who may have been a relative. A wine merchant, Giacona brought new notoriety to the building when the Sicilian Black Hand tried to extort money from him and his family. A gunbattle on the rear porch in 1908 left three of the Giaconas' enemies dead and a fourth wounded. The Giaconas were arrested but later released. Sources say that, after the bloody incident, the Giacona family made the Chartres Street home into an impregnable fortress.

The Giacona family sold the property in 1925 to importer Antonio Mannino, who riled the community by threatening to tear down the house and build either a warehouse or macaroni factory on the site. Gen. Allison Owen, a prominent New Orleans architect and editor of "Architectural Art and Its Allies," bought the house to prevent its destruction. Owen then sold it to Beauregard House Inc., a group of preservation-minded women who organized to maintain the historic building. The association used the house for a variety of purposes over the next two decades, but its true renaissance began in 1944, when writer Francis Parkinson Keyes rented it.

Born in Charlottesville, Va., in 1885, Keyes was educated in Boston, Geneva and Berlin before she married Henry Wilder Keyes, the future governor of New Hampshire and U.S. senator. Keyes wrote 50 novels in her lifetime, many during her 25-year residency in the Beauregard-Keyes House. One book, "The Chess Players," is a semi-fictional account of the life of Le Carpentier's grandson Paul Morphy, and "Madame Castel's Lodger" is about Beauregard's stay in the house.

Keyes did a great deal more than write books in the Chartres Street house: She spearheaded its restoration. In 1945, while still a tenant, she hired Richard Koch of Koch & Wilson Architects to devise the plans. In the early 1950s, Keyes traded property she owned in Faubourg Marigny to acquire the Pelican Steam Factory, built next door on the site where Anais Philippon Merle's garden had once grown. Intent on re-creating the garden, Keyes demolished the factory, salvaged the bricks and used them to build a wall around the lot. She then worked with the Garden Study Club to restore the garden to Merle's original design, using plans discovered in the Notarial Archives.

The Beauregard group sold the house in 1955 to the Keyes Foundation, the nonprofit entity that operates the house museum today. Keyes had hoped that the foundation would buy additional houses where female writers could live and work. Today, the museum contains Keyes' personal collection of antique dolls, teapots, fans and folk costumes, as well as her writing studio.

Perhaps because of its long and varied past, the Beauregard-Keyes House has developed a reputation for being haunted. The most spectacular myths hold that the Battle of Shiloh -- a major Beauregard defeat -- is re-enacted in the upstairs hallway after visitors have gone and the house is empty. Though Director Marion Chambon denied that tale in a Times-Picayune story several years ago, she did say that a psychic had identified "spiritual entities" in the house. One is a cat, called Caroline by the staff, and the other a dog, believed to be the spirit of Keyes' pet cocker spaniel, Lucky.

There's no guarantee you'll see any ghosts, but if you attend the Beauregard-Keyes House spring fund-raiser tonight you can explore the handsomely appointed rooms, view artifacts from the Beauregard and Keyes eras and stroll in the parterre garden. And if you hear a passing buggy driver telling improbable tales, you'll know that truth is sometimes more remarkable than fiction.

Sources:

Robby Cangelosi, Koch & Wilson Architects; National Register: www.crt.state.la.us/nhl2; The Beauregard-Keyes House: www.neworleansonline.com, www.pbs.org, www.neworleansmuseums.com, www.hgtv.com, www.frommers.com; Morphy & Keyes: batgirl.atspace.com/vieuxcaree3.html; Morphy: www.academicchess.com; Beauregard: www.letterscivilwar.com/3-4-64-neworleands.html; ghosts: www.graveaddiction.com, www.prairieghosts.com/beauhouse.html, Times-Picayune article by Jim Krane; other: www.rootsweb.com, www.enlou.com

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