Lafayette’s Sola Violins owner continuesto champion city
Ihad lots of questions when I
first met Anya Burgessalmost two decades ago. Besides how topronounce her maiden name of Schonegge, I asked, “What’sa luthier?” Burgess explained that aluthier makes and repairs stringed instruments, like violins or guitars.
Second, did she reallygoto college to learn this? Burgess proudly proclaimed her degree from Bowdoin College in Maine and completion of atwoyear violin-making program at Indiana University
What’sthe difference betweenafiddle and aviolin? Nothing, said Burgess,justthe style of music played on the instrument.
Did Burgess, aBoston native, really want to set up shop in the Cajun and Creole country of southwest Louisiana? That’s where musicians literallyplay second fiddle to accordionists who wear crowns, win Grammysand have romance résumés thatfuel crawfish boil gossip.
STAFF FILE PHOTO BY BRAD KEMP Anya Burgess is aviolin maker, restorer,playerand owner of Sola Violins in Lafayette.
But Burgess recently reminded me that the fiddle came before the accordion in Acadian/Cajun music. Yet, on her first day in Louisiana in 2000, Burgessknew she was in the right place when she turned on the radio.
“They were speaking French,” Burgess said. “I was just blown away about how cool that was. Ihad no idea people spoke French outside of Canada. Igrew up in Boston, took some French. But nobody talkedabout Louisiana. Ididn’t have to get used to Cajun music or zydeco. Iimmediately just loved it.”
Burgess is celebrating the 10th anniversary of Sola
ä See VIOLINS, page 2G
Paul Heinrich, retired associate researcher with the Louisiana GeologicalSurvey at LSU,discovered citronelle formations in the fractures in the clayey, or clay-like sands exposed in the ditch bordering La. 37
PROVIDED
in February2024.
as
residentFrancis
SP AN IS HT OW N
THROUGH THEYEARS
Howdid BatonRouge’s oldest neighborhood come to be?
BY SERENA PUANG Staff writer
Whatisthe essence of Spanish Town?Isitthe cute houses? TheSpanish Town Parade? Maybe flamingos?
SpanishTownisthe oldest neighborhood in Baton Rouge,laid out in 1805 before the city was the state’s capital. These days, it’sknown for its eccentric nature and its Mardi Gras parade, which is the biggest in the city,but theSpanish Town of today was notinevitable.It’sthe product of people whohaveinvestedin the community,stayed andworked to improve it over theyears.
Theneighborhood was first settled by people “who didn’twant to be American,” said Lawrence “Doc” L’Herisson, longtime resident anda boardmemberfor the Mardi Gras parade. They were mostly people from theCanary Islands who lived under Spanish rule. They were encouragedtosettle in the area to defend FortSan Carlos, which was owned by the Spanish and oncelocated just west of the
DarrylGissel, areal estate agent and formercivic board association leader, looksthrough apersonal collection of photos of Spanish Town properties takenoverthe years.
neighborhood on theriver Evolutions of SpanishTown Sincethe 1800s, theneighborhood has seen many iterations. It was designated as an American military
garrison in the 1810. It was aCivil Warbattle ground —one of the only urban battles of the war. After that, it was amajority Black
ä See SPANISHTOWN, page 2G
BY ROBIN MILLER Staff writer
It measures amile in diameter,and ahighway runs through it Butthe occasional drivers cuttingthrough St.Helena
Herman Fuselier
STAFFFILE PHOTOS BY JAVIER GALLEGOS
TOPLEFT: Musician CliffPatrick, left, teaches Jonah Webster different chord positions as theyplaytheiracoustic guitars together at Belli in SpanishTowninApril 2024. TOPRIGHT: Spanish Town MardiGras parades through town
BOTTOM LEFT: DocL’Herisson digs up arock whilebreaking ground on hisSpanish Town garden
his cat, HoneyBunch, sunbathes nexttohim in March 2024. BOTTOM RIGHT: SpanishTown
Shore smiles while telling astoryonhis porch withhis dog,Jet, in November 2024.
neighborhood during the Reconstruction Era. Formerly enslaved people built some of its signature cottages and houses. From 1886-1926, it was the front lawn of what was then LSU. Back then, University Walk led right to the campus.
In the late 1950s, the interstate came in and wiped out a lot of houses. In that era, changes were made to the neighborhood: North Street was widened into three lanes and people’s yards disappeared with the broader street. From there, in the 1960s, things began to deteriorate.
When L’Herisson moved to the neighborhood in 1977, it wasn’t hip or trendy
“When I first came in it was a slum,” he said. “It was a dicey situation whether the neighborhood was going to get totally tore (sic) down or it was going to become what it is now.”
The house he bought on 7th Street had been vacant for five years. It’s one of the oldest in the neighborhood. People had been sleeping on his front porch and continued to do so for years.
An up and coming neighborhood
Things began to change in 1978 when the neighborhood was put on the National Register of Historic Places, a designation that makes renovations/rehabilitation projects on income-producing properties in the neighborhood eligible for tax credits.
Darryl Gissel, now a Realtor and former head of the Spanish Town Civic Association, moved to the neighborhood as a college student in 1980. He couldn’t get a three-bedroom rental for him and his LSU friends, so he bought a house. Even back then, Spanish Town was a neighborhood of eclectic residents.
“We probably had 14 people who were in their 90s when I came here. They were basically the hub of the neighborhood,” he said.
Gissel said the older residents were “real characters” who had lived in the neighborhood for years, many of whom were devoted Catholics and knew each other well
“Despite the age difference, they took everybody who was young in under their wings and you couldn’t help but love them,” he said.
He remembers Effie Hyde particularly fondly She was a model in her younger days and walked to the cathedral in her high heels every day She’d come home, pick up her dog, and eat her biscuit and bacon as she sashayed through the neighborhood.
Other notable residents include Pat McDonald and his wife, Winnie. Pat grew up in the neighborhood, and was affectionately referred to as the “mayor of Spanish Town” before he passed away in the 1990s.
“You couldn’t walk to the neighborhood grocery store at that time without Pat and Winnie inviting you in for breakfast,” said
Gissel.
Katherine Scales Anders, who was married to beloved Advocate columnist Smiley Anders until he passed away last year, noticed that Pat would always try to chat as she was walking by, so she started building thirty minutes into her errands to have time.
The spirit of the neighborhood
In the 1980s and ’90s, Spanish Town was known for having a large gay population.
Debbie Daniel moved with her partner, Claudette LaCombe, in 1989 because friends told them it was an up-and-coming place. The accepting spirit of the neighborhood drew a lot of couples there, she explained. Even before they moved, they’d come in for what was then the burgeoning Spanish Town parade.
Depending on who’s telling the story, the first parade happened some time between 1979 and the 1981. The official Spanish Town Mardi Gras website says 1981, but some residents remember differently In LaCombe’s memory, the first one was just a few pickup trucks with “drag queens on the back of a flatbed truck holding on for dear life.”
In the 1990s, many people died of HIV/ AIDS and it devastated the neighborhood, said Daniel.
“We lost a lot of friends,” she said.
Today, the young people who moved to Spanish Town in the 1980s are the older residents who the new young people think of as having been there forever
“Two hundred years of continuous resi-
Burgess works on a violin at
VIOLINS
Continued from page 1G
Violins, her instrument building and repair shop in downtown Lafayette. It’s the biggest fiddle shop in Louisiana with five employees and walls filled with violins, violas, cellos, basses and accessories.
Work bench concerts have been known to break out in the warm and cozy shop. Performances have spilled outside during ArtWalk in the city’s downtown.
On Jan. 1, Leiton Leblanc, of Lafayette Travel, played a Sola violin on the Louisiana Office of Tourism’s float in the Rose Parade.
Burgess estimates fewer than 25% of her customers are Cajun fiddlers. Most are symphony players and students from across Louisiana and Mississippi seeking TLC for their stringed instruments.
Sola’s success is a far cry from the Teach for America job that brought Burgess to St. Landry Parish in 2000. Two years of classroom teaching left her unfulfilled, but music kept her in Louisiana.
Word spread that she was making and repairing violins in a shop behind her home in
Lafayette
Arnaudville. Twelve years later, Burgess had the “clients and courage” to open Sola.
Burgess still plays with two Grammy-nominated, mostly female, Cajun bands the Magnolia Sisters and Bonsoir Catin. She’s on the board of the Violin Society of America, part of her constant connections with colleagues across the country
“I tell people where my shop is, and they say, ‘Lafayette, tell me more.’ Or ‘That sounds like fun. Let me come work in your shop for a week, sit at a bench and help you out,’” Burgess said.
“A lot of what I post on social media reflects the culture and how much fun we have here. It opens people’s eyes to Lafayette as a musical town. They may have never even had it on their radar before ”
The Boston native can’t stop talking about her home in the land of accordion kings
“I’m not in just some cookiecutter city,” she said. “This is a special place. Let’s shine the light on it.”
Herman Fuselier is a writer broadcaster and tourism director living in Opelousas. His “Zydeco Stomp” radio show airs at noon Central
FM and online at KRVS Public Media.
dential occupation space that’s what marks Spanish Town,” said L’Herisson. It’s rare to see a neighborhood hold on like that, he said. Other neighborhoods “get bulldozed or rebuilt.”
Spanish Town still has a special charm. People generally know their neighbors. Many residents attribute the neighborly vibe to the infrastructure there’s very little off-street parking, which encourages more interaction. Plus most of the old houses have front porches.
Making a name for itself
The neighborhood is the product of countless hours of community discussions and even fights to preserve it. If one talks to residents who have been there for a while, people talk about how trees used to line the
streets before Hurricane Andrew, drug deals that used to take place by the pay phones outside the grocery store on Spanish Town Road, the great fire ant eradication of 1999 and various fights to keep the neighborhood residential. If something is in the neighborhood, there’s probably a story as to why it’s there.
This history is part of the reason why it can be hard to keep a business open in the neighborhood. In 2024, the small grocery store turned cafe/health food market known as Belli shuttered its door after being open for about a year Spanish Town, known for its bohemian vibe and accepting nature, can also be resistant to change.
“It’s a historical location A lot of people have an emotional attachment to the building,” said former owner of Belli Kristen Guarisco. “You think you’re going in, you’re paying the rent, you’re providing a business at this location, but it never really feels yours because you can’t change things.”
Guarisco shut Belli down last year to maintain the good memories she had there. She still lives in Spanish Town with neighbors she describes as her family In the next few months, the old grocery store will reopen again as Spanish Town Market & Cofe under new ownership. It remains to be seen what the new business will bring to the ever evolving neighborhood.
Email Serena Puang at serena.puang@ theadvocate.com.
CURIOUS
Continued from page 1G
starts,” he said.
Heinrich has since retired from his post at LSU, but he’s still learning about the crater, which is why he believes the crater may be older than originally believed. Again, there are no markers acknowledging this site, save for a few souvenir T-shirts spotted by Heinrich at a Greensburg store a few miles away “The T-shirt was designed by a local artist,” Heinrich said. “They were sold in a local drug store. I don’t know if they’re still selling them.”
Maybe not, since Brushy Creek Crater isn’t exactly a tourist destination. That’s what it’s called now, named for a nearby waterway
Getting to the crater requires a few zigs and zags along country backroads, and once there, time seems to stand still in the silence of the grassy fields on either side of the road.
This is what Brushy Creek Crater basically looks like fencedin grassy pastures with a pond on the north side. With the exception of the highway, the crater occupies privately owned land. On its western rim stands the St. Helena Fire Department District No. 4 Fire-Rescue Headquarters with a clear view of the highway’s slope into the crater
“When you’re driving, the road will cross the rim, go down to the edge of the bowl of the crater, then go back out,” Heinrich said. “But again, most people don’t know this.”
The crater came to Heinrich’s attention when he and others in the Louisiana Geological Survey were doing geological mapping of the area. At one point, they spotted a circular shape in one of their thematic laser images.
It didn’t show up as a definitive crater bowl such as, say, the Meteor Crater Natural Landmark near Flagstaff, Arizona. Still, Brushy Creek’s diameter is slightly larger than the Arizona tourist attraction.
“We thought it looked like an impact crater,” Heinrich said.
“I just took it from there. I can’t correctly recall when that was what or what mapping project we were on, but it may have been a few years before 2008. There aren’t any volcanoes here, and there are no salt domes in this part of the state, so we knew that something strange was happening.”
Heinrich, along with a team of LSU geologists, took a trip northward from LSU to St. Helena Parish, situated in the center of the Florida Parishes.
“We looked around, and then I went back out there several times and collected samples,” Heinrich said. “And then in 2008, we did a state mapping project in what we call the seven-and-a-half-minute quadrangle in that area.”
A seven-and-one-half minute quadrangle is a geological surveyproduced topographic map covering an area spanning seven and one-half minutes of latitude and seven and one-half minutes of longitude.
“We collected samples at the core, which weren’t analyzed until several years later, but proved to be most useful,” Heinrich continued.
LSU’s Department of Geology and Geophysics’ analysis showed evidence of how the meteorite smashed into the terrain’s bedrock. Rich in iron, its massive heat bleached the sediment. It also showed indications of impact melt, which is a glassy, molten rock containing grains of shocked quartz.
Shocked quartz has a different microscopic structure than earthly quartz.
“All of this indicates an extraterrestrial impact, because the only time you get shocked quartz is in an extraterrestrial impact or nuclear explosion,” Heinrich said. “We can rule out the Native Americans having nuclear weapons back then, so our other option is extraterrestrial impact.”
The meteorite’s impact was catastrophic for southeast Louisiana.
“Whoever was in the local vicinity had a very bad day,” Heinrich
said. “The crater was probably about 100 feet in diameter It would have killed anything between 20 and 30 miles from the point impact. From Baton Rouge, it would have looked something like a big, bright light on the horizon.”
Heinrich added that most of the meteorite, itself, vaporized on impact. Meanwhile, the mile-wide hole, itself, has been erased by erosion.
Still, the Brushy Creek Crater’s outline thrives.
Heinrich calls the crater a “young event,” when considering that the frequency of meteorites slamming into the earth is about 2,000 years. “I would say that this is the first impact crater to be found in Louisiana,” Heinrich said. “And it’s also useful information for determining the frequency of impacts over time, which has always been a concern which is one of the problems of not having a date, because you really can’t figure out how it fits into the frequency of such events.”
Do you have a question about something in Louisiana that’s got you curious? Email your question to curiouslouisiana@ theadvocate.com. Include your name, phone number and the city where you live.
PROVIDED IMAGE BY PAUL HEINRICH
The rounded St. Helena Parish meteorite crater appears almost in the center of this Light Detection and Ranging or LIDAR, map.A close look also will reveal the line that is La. 37, which cuts through it
STAFF FILE
PHOTO BY BRAD KEMP
Anya
her shop in
STAFF PHOTO BY SERENA PUANG
Debbie Daniel and Claudette LaCombe pose outside their house in Spanish Town. Their yard is full of the neighborhood’s signature flamingos.
STAFF FILE PHOTO BY ARTHUR LAUCK
The building formerly known as Belli Grocery owned by Kristen Guarisco located on Spanish Town Road in downtown Baton Rouge.
The cafe will reopen as Spanish Town Market & Cofe in 2025.
COMMUNITY
Seven dogs were evaluated Dec. 21 at Perkins Rowe among the Christmas shoppers. After taking an obedience class with the Louisiana Capital Obedience Club, all the dogs passed their
evaluations to earn the AKC Canine Good Citizen title, Community Canine title and the Urban Dog
New St. John Baptist Church
The Rev. W. Marshall Myles gave his last sermon as senior pastor of New St. John Baptist Church on Dec. 29. Shown are, from left, Terrance Williams, Linda Williams, Myles and Huston Williams.
Magnolia Wood Garden Club
Shown are, from
The Magnolia Wood Garden Club held its annual Christmas social on Dec. 12 at the home of Bruce and Joy Hammatt. Gathered are, from left, seated, Maribeth Andereck, Tamara Wittenbrink, Suzanne Blunt, Joy Hammatt and Karla Long Houston; standing, Duane
Dixon. PROVIDED PHOTO
COMMUNITY GUIDELINES
The Community column runs Sundays in the Living section and accepts submissions for news of events that have taken place with civic, philanthropic, social and religious auxiliary organizations, as well as academic honors. Submissions should be sent by noon Monday to run in the upcoming Sunday column. If submitting digitally we prefer JPG files 300KB or larger We prefer emailed Community column submissions to features@theadvocate.com.We also accept submissions by mail at P.O. Box 588, Baton Rouge LA 70821.A phone number must be included.
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PROVIDED PHOTO
Huffty, Trudy Huffty, Jeff Wittenbrink, Matt Blunt, Bruce Hammatt and Skeeter
PROVIDED PHOTO
Louisiana Capital City Obedience Club
title.
left, Emily Ferguson with Orion, Lisa Comeaux with Ammo, Jeanie Jines with Jasney, Lindsey Hope with Pippi, Taylor Paternostro with Enzo and Erin Jines with Reina and Skifter Not pictured is Jessica Ayala and Karma.
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