Rochenoire

The Maison de la Rochenoire was the Pendergast family home in New Orleans, Louisiana. It was located on Dauphine Street, across from the Audubon Cottage.

Appearance
Originally a Carmelite monastery, Rochenoire was purchased by Pendergast's ancestor Augustus Robespierre St. Cyr Pendergast in 1750. The large stone structure was built in the Gothic Revival style, unusual for the French Quarter. It had large formal gardens in front with oriel windows, battlements, and a widow's walk.

A hidden elevator behind a bookshelf in the library led to the cellar, a maze of stone passageways leading to another hidden door in a bricked-up archway. Beyond, a circular staircase led down into the Pendergast family necropolis, where a varied series of stone crypts held the remains of over twelve generations of Pendergasts.

Aloysius and Diogenes Pendergast grew up at Rochenoire, at that time owned by their father Linnaeus Pendergast. The brothers enjoyed exploring the house's crypts and basements and had a secret hideout under a back staircase that they called "Plato's Cave."

Burning
T he home was burned down by an angry mob when Aloysius Pendergast was twenty years old. The exact circumstances of the event have not been revealed, but it is known that the mob was incited by a "chemistry experiment" conducted by Aloysius's great-aunt Cornelia and his younger brother Diogenes. Linnaeus  and  Isabella Pendergast  were both killed in the fire; Diogenes, who had hidden in the basement, survived.

After the fire, the family crypts were removed to Penumbra Plantation, the lot was filled in and the location was eventually turned into a parking lot.

Sale
Following the events of Blue Labyrinth, in a restitutive effort to divest all of the family's holdings resulting from Hezekiah Pendergast and his toxic elixir, Pendergast placed the property where Rochenoire had been located up for sale, though the language of the sales contract forbade any excavation on the property, effectively precluding any development.

Memory Palace
As a technique developed from his training in the deep meditative art of Chongg Ran, Aloysius Pendergast recreated Rochenoire in his mind as a memory palace, a mental construct containing all of his experiences and observations. Here, his collective knowledge–including chronicles of past events, facts and figures, chemical formulae, complex mathematical or metaphysical proofs, even unanswered questions–were recorded on parchment and bound between gilt covers in his mind's eye, stored in the countless shelves and niches throughout the mansion.

891 Riverside Drive
When he moved to New York after being banished from Rochenoire as a young man, Antoine Leng Pendergast bought a large Beaux Arts style mansion overlooking the Hudson River. He completely rebuilt the interior to match the layout of Rochenoire, including the hidden basement and subbasement entrances.