Calcasieu Parish Courthouse

The Great Fire of April 1910 burned through Lake Charles and took the 1891 courthouse with it. By 1912, Favrot & Livaudais had delivered the replacement: a copy of the Villa Capra "La Rotonda" outside Vicenza, Italy—a Renaissance villa transplanted to a Louisiana parish seat. The dome is solid copper. Lake Charles was incorporated in 1861, named after an early settler, Charles Sallier. The city sits on a level plain where oak and pine once fed a lumber industry that was the main economic engine of the area. The courthouse went up during the height of the Calcasieu Parish lumber boom, when the prominent New Orleans architectural firm could deliver Classical Revival design at municipal scale. The building anchors downtown alongside the 1911 City Hall, both products of the reconstruction that followed the fire. The courthouse was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on November 2, 1989. It remains an active courthouse—walk in during business hours.