UNO Documentary: H. Rault Locksmith

What: H. Rault Locksmith

Film By: UNO Student and documentarian Ashley Deshotel

Editor’s Note: NolaVie partners with students of UNO professor László Zsolt Fülöp, pairing them with artists, non-profits, environmental groups, and cultural entities to facilitate a live curriculum that results in a short documentary. This documentary short was made by Ashley Deshotel, a student in the Film and Theatre Department at the University of New Orleans, about Michelle Miller and H. Rault Locksmith.

|Read the full transcript of the interview below|

My name is Michelle Miller and I am the owner of the H. Rault Locksmith established in 1845.

The first real location of the shop was over here on St. Mary street in uptown and that was in like 1847.

My farther bought it from the last surviving grandson of Henry Rault, and his name was Russel Stobbs, and my dad came in 1989 and hung out here and in 1990 officially became the owner of H. Rault. Henry came over, he was an emigrant from France and he started what you see today in the back of, we think, the jewelry store cause I got pictures which that put in there and that’s where he initially started and then a few years later he moved over to open up his own shop here in the Irish channel.

When I came here, we were just a locksmith shop, and in the years that I have been here I have kind of have taken it in a different direction that you would have seen prior to my arrival. Light bulb went off in my head and kicked in, and then I started adding a retail element to the locksmithing side. So, we always say that this is the locksmithing side because we are the locksmith, that’s what we do and that is our foundation, I always say that is the rule of the gumbo. And then if you look on this side, this is more of your retail side.

There is so much history here, when you look in a case you just see things where a lot of times people don’t even know what this stuff is, it is history.

One thing I am extremely proud about here is on any given day you can have a dude from Tremé standing at the counter with a woman from St. Charles, a guy, you know, a high-power guy from one of those high rises in the CBD and they all stand together at this counter and they will talk to each other. And I am just like: “This is fantastic, you know, this is real life, you know, these are real life people getting their keys, getting their locks taken care of”. The diversity that comes in here and braces one another at my counter, I get to see it every day. We are one of those businesses when you walk through the door, we know your name. Some of these people have been coming to this business for over 45-50 years. There are grandpas that bring their sons in, there are sons that bring their sons in, I wonder what other businesses bring every part of society together in one spot and they all get along.