Context Part 3
Economic and Political Context of Baton RougeOn January 16, 1817, the state legislature incorporated the town of Baton Rouge and empowered it to elect a government. Instead of a mayor as chief executive, the town elected a “town magistrate” who also served as president of the board of selectmen; Town Magistrate John R. Dufrog became the first “mayor” of Baton Rouge in 1850.
By 1805, two still-existing neighborhoods already had been laid out: “Spanishtown,” now in the area of Boyd Avenue near Capitol Lake, and “Beauregard Town,” bounded by North, East, and South Boulevards and the river. Spanishtown was the home of Spanish residents and Canary Islanders. Beauregard Town was laid out by Capt. Elias Beauregard, great-uncle of Civil War General Pierre G.T. Beauregard, and was intended to include a fashionable central square, modeled on Jackson Square in New Orleans. As the city grew in the early 19th century, most Anglo families lived in the middle of town, along North, Main, and Laurel Streets, while the French built homes closer to the river.
The first steamboat, the New Orleans, landed at Baton Rouge in January 1812 and the town’s prosperous economy subsequently became highly identified with the river traffic. In 1822 alone, more than eight steamboats, 175 barges, and several hundred freight-carrying flatboats tied up at Baton Rouge’s wharves.
Baton Rouge’s location also continued to be a strategic consideration, and between 1819 and 1822 the War Department built the Pentagon Barracks near the site of old Fort San Carlos as quarters for an infantry regiment; much of the construction was supervised by Lt. Col. Zachary Taylor. In the 1830s, a federal arsenal was built near the barracks, on the grounds of the present state capitol. After the Mexican War, with the westward movement of the frontier, the military presence in Baton Rouge dwindled in importance. The Pentagon Barracks was later acquired by the state of Louisiana and has served as dormitories for LSU, as state offices, and as apartments for high-ranking state officials and employees, including (at present) the lieutenant-governor.
In 1825, Baton Rouge was visited by the Marquis de Lafayette as part of his triumphal tour of the United States, and he was the guest of honor at a town ball and banquet. To celebrate the occasion, the town renamed Second Street “Lafayette Street.”
In 1846, the Louisiana state legislature decided to move the seat of government away from New Orleans -- largely because a growing majority of legislators and state officials were fundamentalist Protestants and regarded the hedonistic Crescent City with distaste. The constitutional convention the previous year, in fact, had ordained that the state capital should thenceforth be “no closer than sixty miles” to New Orleans; a compromise with legislators who were actually from New Orleans (about one-third of the legislature) resulted in the selection of Baton Rouge. Local citizens donated land and East Baton Rouge Parish appropriated $5,000 for site acquisition.
New York architect James Dakin was hired to design a new statehouse, and rather than mimic the federal Capitol Building in Washington, as so many other states had done, he conceived a Neo-Gothic medieval castle overlooking the Mississippi, complete with turrets and crenellations. The cornerstone was laid on November 3, 1847 and dedication ceremonies were scheduled for December 1, 1849, but eight days before that a raging fire wiped out approximately one-fifth of the town. Firefighting facilities were upgraded as a result, and Baton Rouge evolved into a brick town instead of a wooden one. In 1859, the Capitol was featured and favorably described in DeBow's Review, the most prestigious periodical in the antebellum South. Mark Twain, however, as a steamboat pilot in the 1850s, loathed the sight of it, considering it pretentious, undemocratic, and "famously ugly."
Gen. Butler, commanding in New Orleans, ordered the federal evacuation of Baton Rouge a week after the battle but Union troops returned in mid-December; they would stay until the end of Reconstruction in April 1877. Given that Baton Rouge was not a den of secession to begin with, most of its citizens accepted federal occupation willingly enough, though many others went to stay with rural relatives until the war ended. Nevertheless, local leaders in 1864 estimated the town’s losses since secession at more than $10 million in freed slaves, burned buildings, destroyed crops, looted property, and confiscated horses and mules. It took more than a decade for the town and its citizens to begin to recover, especially since New Orleans had again become the state capital.
Increased civic-mindedness and the arrival of the Louisville, New Orleans, and Texas Railroad led to the development of more forward-looking leadership, which included the construction of a new waterworks, widespread electrification of homes and businesses, and the passage of several large bond issues for the construction of public buildings, new schools, paving of streets, drainage and sewer improvements, and the establishment of a scientific municipal public health department.
At the same time, the state government was constructing in Baton Rouge a new Institute for the Blind and a School for the Deaf. LSU moved from New Orleans to temporary quarters at the old arsenal and barracks. Finally, legal challenges to the Standard Oil Company in Texas led its board of directors to move its refining operations in 1909 to the banks of the Mississippi just above town; Exxon is still the largest private employer in Baton Rouge.
In the 1930s a new skyscraper state capitol building was built under the direction of Huey P. Long. The old state capitol is now a museum.
Information gathered from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baton_Rouge,_Louisiana#Points_of_interest.Check back soon for more information!
posted by liz @ 6:11 PM
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