Manship House Museum

In 1862, Charles Manship made the decision that saved downtown Baton Rouge. Union forces approached the city, and the mayor chose to surrender without firing a shot. The move was controversial — surrender always is — but it spared the residential core from shelling. The houses stayed standing. Manship's own house, built in 1853, is the clearest proof of what he preserved. The Gothic Revival cottage is the best-preserved example of its type in Louisiana, a style that would have been reduced to scorched timber had he chosen differently. Now it operates as a house museum, run by the Louisiana Division of Historic Preservation, furnished to the period when a mayor weighed his conscience against his city's architecture and chose the latter. The house sits at 741 North Boulevard in the Beauregard Town Historic District, listed on the National Register. Tours run on the hour, Tuesday through Saturday. Admission is free. You walk through rooms that exist because one man declined to make them a battlefield.