The hall itself is a monument. Completed in 1888, it was designed by the architectural firm Sully & Toledano in the Richardsonian Romanesque style, echoing the heavy arches and rough-hewn masonry of the adjacent Howard Memorial Library designed by H.H. Richardson himself. Frank T. Howard placed the building in the possession of the Louisiana Historical Association in January 1891, declaring it would be "set apart forever" for the organization's use. The cypress-paneled interior, with its vaulted ceilings and stained glass, was built not as a celebratory space but as a solemn one -- a place where veterans could deposit the tangible remnants of their service and ensure they would not be forgotten.

The collection reads like a catalog of the Confederacy's most prominent figures. The personal effects and uniforms of generals Braxton Bragg and P.G.T. Beauregard occupy prominent displays. Over 140 regimental and Confederate flags hang preserved behind glass, their fabric fraying at the edges but their colors still legible. Perhaps the most unusual artifact came from Varina Davis, widow of the Confederate president, who donated her husband's clothing, Bible, and saddle. Among these items sits a crown of thorns sent to Davis by Pope Pius IX during his imprisonment at Fort Monroe after the war -- a gesture of sympathy that has fascinated visitors for more than a century. Most of the collection arrived as personal donations from veterans themselves, men who walked through the doors carrying pieces of their past.

The museum's most dramatic battles have been legal ones. In the 1940s, the adjoining Howard Library outgrew its space and relocated to Tulane University. The old library building eventually passed to the University of New Orleans, which converted it and a neighboring property into the Ogden Museum of Southern Art. Memorial Hall found itself physically sandwiched between two Ogden buildings, and visitors to the art museum had to walk outside and around the old Confederate hall to see the rest of the collection. UNO proposed a connecting tunnel through Memorial Hall's basement. Negotiations collapsed in 1998. By 2001, UNO was claiming ownership of the Memorial Hall building itself and trying to evict the museum. Court battles dragged on for years, with title ownership granted to UNO but eviction efforts repeatedly stayed by the courts.

It took a governor to broker peace. Mike Foster intervened in the dispute, and in August 2003 both parties agreed to drop their lawsuits. Under the compromise, UNO would cede its title claims to the Memorial Hall building and land in exchange for the construction of the basement tunnel that had been proposed back in 1997. The agreement gave ten years for implementation. The museum survived -- battered by litigation but still standing on the same Camp Street ground where it had opened more than a century earlier. In 2011, the FBI recovered a Confederate battle flag from the 14th Louisiana Infantry Regiment that had been stolen from the museum in the 1980s by a volunteer and later sold to an unsuspecting collector. Even the artifacts, it seemed, had their own stories of loss and return.