HISTORIC BUILDINGS

There are a number of residential and commercial buildings in the Breaux Bridge Historic District, which is composed primarily of the old downtown area on the west side of Bayou Teche and encompasses several blocks.

According to National Register documents, “Breaux Bridge, like other communities across the country, did not develop with separate commercial and residential sectors. The two were freely mixed… Although there were scattered commercial buildings on the east side of the bayou, the downtown proper was on the west side…  Here, along Bridge and Main Streets, residences stood between or across from commercial buildings. Also, of course, two-story buildings combine residential and commercial use. Washington Street, which parallels Bayou Teche, was commercial in orientation near Bridge Street and more residential further south. These historical use patterns are present today in the district, enabling one to “read” the community’s development, so to speak.

Until the coming of the railroad in 1895, steamboats plying Bayou Teche were the means of transporting agricultural goods produced in the region to market. . . The bayou/railroad town quite naturally emerged as a center for goods and services for its own citizens as well as those living in hamlets and plantations in the area. The nearest other towns of any size were Lafayette and St. Martinville, roughly ten and fifteen miles away, respectively. Such distances prior to the mid-1920s were particular obstacles because roads were unpaved.

Downtowns such as Breaux Bridge’s provided virtually all the goods and services a person could need. General mercantile stores of the type once found in various buildings carried everything from clothing to furniture, to patent medicines, to buggy harnesses…  Frank Pellerin’s store…  specializes in furniture…  Other surviving buildings housed hardware stores, a hotel/boarding house backing up to Bayou Teche, a movie theater, a barber shop, and more than one shop labeled ‘drugs’. And, of course, it goes without saying that the Bank of Breaux Bridge provided invaluable service.

The Breaux Bridge Historic District is also … significant … because it epitomizes the manner in which the town developed. Although the railroad by the turn of the century had supplanted the bayou as the major transportation artery, the downtown remained more oriented toward the bayou and the bridge traversing it, as it had been originally. In short, what happened in some communities, the reorientation of the commercial sector to the railroad, did not occur.”

The district was placed on the National Register in July 1995.

Sources: “A Tourguide of Breaux Bridge, Louisiana”, Kenneth Delcambre, Breaux Bridge City Historian; “History of Acadiana”, Jim Bradshaw, the Daily Advertiser; the National Register of Historic Places; Victorian Homes, “Feels Like Home”, Nancy Ruhling, June 1999.