Prudhomme-Rouquier House

The largest surviving bousillage building in the country stands at 446 Jefferson Street, two stories of mud-and-timber construction that François Rouquier started around 1790 on land from a Spanish grant. Rouquier married Marie Louise Prudhomme, daughter of Jean Baptiste Prudhomme, Doctor of the King. Judge John Carr remodeled the facade in the 1820s, giving the house the appearance it carries now. Bousillage-entre-poteaux — mud packed between vertical posts — rarely survives at all in the United States, and almost never at two stories. This one does. Natchitoches was established in 1714 as a French outpost for trade with Spanish-controlled Mexico, and it's the oldest permanent European settlement within the borders of the Louisiana Purchase. The house sits in that layered colonial record: Spanish land, French construction, an American judge's later hand. The Service League of Natchitoches acquired the house in 1976 for preservation. It stands in the National Historic Landmark District, a two-story answer to what lasts when everything else burns or shifts course.