Beauregard Parish Courthouse

The Beaux-Arts courthouse in DeRidder was finished in 1915, the same year as the Gothic jail that stands beside it. Both buildings were designed by Stevens-Nelson of New Orleans and built by Falls City Construction Company for $168,000. What makes the pair unusual among Louisiana civic architecture is the underground tunnel that connects them — incorporated into the design to move prisoners to and from the jail to stand trial while maintaining safety. Beauregard Parish had just been carved out of Imperial Calcasieu Parish when the police jury bought property from the First Baptist Church and an adjacent tract donated by the Hudson River Lumber Company. The tunnel is no longer in use. It has been completely blocked off somewhere between the two buildings, and the small portion visible from the jail side now collects standing water. The jail itself has been renovated and is open for public tours on weekdays, with occasional lantern tours at night and a haunted house around Halloween. A trial held here ended in two hangings at the jail, the last on March 9, 1928, which earned the complex its nickname "Hanging Jail." The courthouse was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1983. It remains an active courthouse, open to the public during business hours — a working building where you can walk through Beaux-Arts civic architecture while knowing that somewhere beneath you, a passage once connected courtroom to cell.