The Endangered Places
The Louisiana Trust for Historic Preservation announces its top ten most intriguing at-risk cultural sites
Ours is an infrastructural culture: the woodgrains holding where we’ve come from, the styles all that we hoped to be, the frameworks how we survived. The buildings that rise today say as much, though perhaps less, than the buildings that are allowed to fall to disrepair. But then, there are the ones that can still be saved.
Each year the Louisiana Trust for Historic Preservation (LTHP) selects ten historically-significant at-risk sites across the state that hold an important place in the identity of local communities. Since 1999, over 180 sites have been recognized as worthy of being saved, resulting in over one-third of them being rehabilitated. This designation, LTHP Executive Director Brian Davis explained, can act as a tool for local preservation advocates to legitimize their efforts and urgency in saving endangered properties, using resources such as designation by the National Register of Historic Places and state and federal tax credits.
This year’s ten properties include two historic Catholic churches damaged by recent hurricanes: the circa 1941 Sacred Heart of Jesus Catholic Church and Convent in Lake Charles—which served a majority Black congregation for almost eighty years before sustaining serious damage during Hurricanes Laura and Delta; and the third oldest Catholic church in the Archdiocese of New Orleans, St. John the Baptist (c. 1920)—which survived the eye of Hurricane Ida in 2021, but with serious damage.
"This designation, LTHP Executive Director Brian Davis explained, can act as a tool for local preservation advocates to legitimize their efforts and urgency in saving endangered properties, using resources such as designation by the National Register of Historic Places and state and federal tax credits."
Also falling victim to recent hurricanes was E.J. Caire & Co. Stores in St. John the Baptist Parish, constructed in 1855 and occupied by the Caire Family as the area’s mercantile store for generations. Ida blew off the roof and the parapets.
Many of the sites on this year’s list have been the victim of longer, slower decay—such as the circa 1922 Joy Theatre in Arcadia, which once featured silent films accompanied by a local pianist, but has now been vacant for decades. Endangered sites like the circa-1918 Old West Carrol National Bank, now occupied by the Chamber of Commerce, and New Orleans’s circa 1926 Neoclassical Bolton High School are still in active operation in their communities. This is also true of Barker’s Pharmacy, founded in 1885 in Plaquemine, and the cica-1837 Tchefuncte River Light Station, which still guides boats along the Tchefuncte River despite standing on an eroding shoreline.
Two of the most fascinating sites on this year’s list are each vital to preserving the histories of African Americans here in Louisiana.
Sweet Olive Cemetery in East Baton Rouge Parish encompasses five acres that mark the resting places of multiple generations of Black residents of the area going all the way back to enslavement. The site is maintained and advocated for by the nonprofit Friends of the Sweet Olive Cemetery, who also educate the public on the individuals buried there.
And finally, there is Riverlake Plantation in Pointe Coupee Parish, which today includes the Creole-style plantation home built in 1823, a pigeonnière, and two cabins once occupied by enslaved families and tenant farmers in a community known as Cherie Quarters. The property was famously the birthplace of author Ernest Gaines, and the inspiration for many of his nationally-acclaimed novels—which centered on life in Black communities around plantations post-Civil War.
Until December 31, submissions are open for the 2024 Most Endangered Places List at lthp.org, where you can also read more about the sites on 2023’s list, and the current efforts to save them.