Photo by Dr. Michael Desmond

Growing up in Lake Charles, Doug Cochran loved to visit buildings designed by his architect father. 

“In the summer my dad would take me and my brother to the sites,” he said. “I liked seeing how a building was built. I was three or four years old, running around in a hard hat.”

Cochran studied architecture at LSU but soon switched to law. He is now an attorney in Baton Rouge, but he still visits buildings as chairman of the board of directors of the Foundation for Historic Louisiana.

“The foundation gives me an outlet,” he said. “It lets me enjoy architecture and hopefully save some buildings. From my office, I can look out my window directly at the Commerce Building on the corner of Laurel and Third streets. It’s a shame it is sitting vacant when it could be filled with people. One of my goals for the foundation is to help people get buildings back into commercial use.”

Cochran has strong feelings about residential areas, too. He isn’t enthralled with the current Tear Down and Throw Up mania, in which perfectly good houses are ripped up and replaced with McMansions. “My house was built in 1929,” he said. “It’s one of the oldest on my street.

Country Roads readers picked the Royal Hotel in Amite, built around 1900, as their favorite historic preservation project from five that Cochran nominated. Cochran cited its historical elements—transoms, painted room numbers, hardwood flooring, detailed millwork and a grand balcony.

“The hotel was just hidden,” Cochran said. “It was overgrown with plants. It was relatively nondescript until it got cleaned up. Two ladies contacted the foundation for help saving the building. We helped them set up a nonprofit, told them about tax credits, and gave them ideas of what can be done with the building. The grass-roots organization to save it is really excited and fired up. Projects like this can get buildings back into useful commerce, so they are being used by the community as they were in the past.”

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