Visiting Louisiana’s Capitol – Baton Rouge LA [March 21,2017]

Baton Rouge is the capitol of Louisiana.  It is a moderately sized city along the banks of the Mississippi River.  It is a deep water port and has oil refineries along the banks of the river.  It is also the home of LSU.  We had been recommended to go visit the state capitol building, so we did.  It was beautiful and very interesting.

Huey Long is a name from history.  He was a very young governor of Louisiana, and then moved on to the U.S. Senate.  He is presented as being an advocate of the poor during the Great Depression, and a big supporter of the New Deal and FDR.  In 1930, Governor Long convinced the state legislature that a new capitol building would ultimately save the state money with the new efficiencies of a modern building.  The 34 story, 450 feet tall building was built in just 14 months and cost only $5 million.  It is the tallest State Capitol building.

Louisiana Senate

Louisiana House of Representatives

The building is considered an example of Art Deco Architecture that was in vogue at the time.  The enormous central hall has murals over the doorways to the Senate and House of Representatives.  Massive brass chandeliers hang from the ceiling.  The Senate and House chambers are spacious and elegant, lit by large windows.  There are marvelous brass grills over the heat registers with stylized representations of the pelican, the Louisiana state bird.  Alligators peek out through foliage on the column capitals.

The Capitol grounds, the small rectangular structure is the Civil War Armory

Barge on the Mississippi

Petrochemical industry

On the 27^th floor you can visit an observation gallery that goes around the outside of the tower.  You have a tremendous view of the Mississippi River.  On the grounds are two Civil War era buildings, an old arsenal and the Old Pentagon Barracks.  There are only 4 sides to the barracks, the 5^th side opens to a view of the River.

The Pentagon Barracks

Bullet hole in the column

For the more salacious visitor, Huey Long was assassinated in the corridors of the Capitol building at the age of 37.  You can see a bullet hole in one of the marble columns from the fire fight that killed his assailant.  There is a display showing news articles of the time, and a drawing of the assassination.

1 step for each of the 48 steps, the original 13 are together in the first flight.

Baton Rouge has a paved walkway along the levee along the river.  It gives a nice view of the mighty Mississippi.  Nearby is the "Old" State Capitol Building, a remarkable castle-like structure.  It has recently been restored, by the time we got there it was closed so we couldn't visit inside it.

Old State Capitol

We don’t usually blog about where we stayed, but in Baton Rouge we stayed at the Farr Equestrian Park and Campground, a horse riding center run by the city recreation department.  It is near LSU, and must be packed for the big football games.  For us, it was a gentle, pastoral setting with horses munching away on green, green grass outside of our windows.

The view from our window