The Bellemont was built in 1946 on Airline Highway by A. C. Lewis, back when Airline Highway was how you got to Baton Rouge and the Bellemont was the first and last word in it — crystal chandeliers, marble floors, French provincial furniture, the place you had the wedding and the reunion and the political fundraiser. Through the fifties, sixties, and seventies it was where Baton Rouge went to be seen. The Great Hall went up in 1984.
Then the same decade's Interstate 10 and its new river bridge pulled the traffic off Airline Highway, and Airline Highway was the Bellemont's whole reason for being. The malls finished what the interstate started — Bon Marché closing, the Mall of Louisiana opening, Airline and Florida Boulevard going from cosmopolitan to nothing in particular. The Bellemont changed hands, emptied out, sat. It was demolished in 2012. The thing that killed it was not a storm or a fire. It was a road being built somewhere slightly better.
