Columbia Town Square Historic District

Columbia was planned in the 1830s around a courthouse square, the Caldwell Parish seat laid out in a grid typical of pre-railroad parish towns. The National Register of Historic Places designation covers the district, which still reads as one intact piece—antebellum houses on some blocks, Victorian on others, the Caldwell Parish Courthouse holding the center where it was drawn. The architecture tells two stories at once. Antebellum structures stand alongside Victorian residential buildings, marking the periods when Columbia grew. The grid layout remains legible, the courthouse still at the focal point, the residential blocks still facing in toward public space. This is what a Louisiana parish seat looked like before railroad development reshaped the region's towns—and Columbia kept that form. You go to see a town square that still does what it was built to do: organize public life around a courthouse, with the residential architecture of two centuries surrounding it.