Downtown Baton Rouge Historic District

Third Street between Main and North Boulevard runs through the oldest commercial core still standing in Baton Rouge. Forty-three buildings line the avenue, dating from around 1860 to the mid-1950s. This is downtown as it looked when downtown was the only place that mattered—before the interstates restructured the city's retail geography and scattered commerce to the suburbs. The oldest survivors are at 447 Third Street: the Knox Building and the Welsh-Levy Building, both from 1887. At 301-303-307 North Boulevard, a three-part structure went up sometime between 1860 and 1870, predating the commercial boom that filled Third Street with banks and department stores. The Old Post Office, built in 1894 at 355 North Boulevard, now houses the Baton Rouge City Club. The Fuqua Hardware Store Building rose at 358 Third Street in 1905. The Roumain Building and the Louisiana Theater, both from 1913, anchor the middle blocks. The Kress Building, built around 1935, represents the district's later construction. Thirty-two of the forty-three buildings contribute to the district's historic character. Six are individually listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The district itself was added to the National Register on November 10, 2009. Walk it on foot. The district is a short walk from the State Capitol, and Third Street still reads as a commercial spine—narrow storefronts, second-story windows, brick cornices intact. One building at 359 Third Street, built around 1920, now hosts the Baton Rouge Area Convention and Visitors Bureau. The street gives you the city as it was before the oil refineries and highway interchanges remade the geography—when Baton Rouge's business district was still compressed into a few blocks along the bluff above the Mississippi.