Pentagon Barracks

Four identical brick buildings close a pentagon above the Mississippi bluff, built from 1819 to 1825 under Captain James Gadsden of the United States Army. The soldiers completed the four two-story structures by 1825 and designed them to house one thousand troops. A fifth building — a commissary-warehouse forming the fifth side of the pentagon — went up in 1821, but faulty construction forced the Army to tear it down within months. Baton Rouge owed its strategic importance to the Istrouma Bluff, the first natural rise upriver from the Mississippi Delta. The same bluff that allowed a business quarter safe from seasonal flooding made the site worth fortifying. The British erected Fort New Richmond here in 1779. Spanish colonial governor Bernardo de Gálvez arrived on September 20, 1779, found three hundred British troops garrisoning it, and captured it the next day. Spain renamed it Fort San Carlos and held it through the Republic of West Florida's three-month life in 1810. American forces took control in December 1810, used the post as an assembly point for the Creek War and the Battle of New Orleans, then demolished the old Spanish fort in 1819 to make room for Gadsden's barracks. Robert E. Lee, Zachary Taylor, Lafayette, George Custer, Jefferson Davis, and Abraham Lincoln all passed through during the post's active military life. The United States Army occupied the barracks and adjacent arsenal until January 1861, when Louisiana seized them and turned the arsenal over to the Confederacy. Union troops retook the complex in May 1862. After a failed Confederate attempt to recapture Baton Rouge that August, Union authorities renamed the installation Fort Williams, for General Thomas Williams, killed in the battle. In 1884, the General Assembly allocated the buildings and grounds to Louisiana State University. LSU used them as dormitories from 1886 until the university moved to its current campus in 1926. Ownership transferred to the State of Louisiana in 1951. On July 26, 1973, the buildings were placed on the National Register of Historic Places. The barracks now house the lieutenant governor's offices and private apartments for state legislators. The original parade ground is still intact between the four brick buildings. The exteriors and parade ground are open to visitors. They are among the oldest surviving federal military structures in the Gulf South.