The Museums Along the Mississippi

The Museums Along the Mississippi

A GUIDE TO THE FASCINATING COLLECTIONS ALONG THE RIVER ROAD

By Mary Ann Sternberg

A boy, about seven years old, hung over the railing of the large 1904 sugar mill model in the central atrium of the West Baton Rouge Museum, enchanted. Press the button and a voice-over provides the boy’s introduction to how the tall grass called sugar cane is magically transformed into raw sugar. And since the factories called sugar mills that perform this feat rarely give tours, this may be the only way the boy, or anyone else, can see this demonstrated.

The mill model is part of an extensive exhibit about sugar, an insight into this slice of local history and culture that remains important in West Baton Rouge as well as elsewhere along the River Road. It’s typical of what the (mostly) small museums of the River Road do: present stories that focus on local people and their cultures, on the basic essence of the place and how its heritage has influenced what it has become.

New Orleans and Baton Rouge—the anchor cities of the River Road, an approximately one hundred mile section in South Louisiana of the Great River Road National Scenic Byway—are well known for their assortment of excellent museums. The stretch of geography in between, through cane fields and petrochemical plants, is most often defined as a plantation parade because its best known attractions are the elegant antebellum mansions open to the public. But in fact, wonderful museums exist along the River Road, tucked in along the bends on both banks of the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge.

Each of the River Road’s museums offers some combination of education and entertainment, insights into past and present in this richly historic and colorful region.

Here is a listing of River Road museums by location—downriver along the west bank from Port Allen; upriver along the east bank from LaPlace. Travel the roads sequentially—or dip in as you desire. And enjoy!

WEST BANK

The West Baton Rouge Museum

The West Baton Rouge Museum, located inside the records vault of the old 1880s West Baton Rouge Parish courthouse building, houses a fine permanent collection focused on the sugar industry and the history and culture of rural life in the parish. Changing exhibits of art and regional culture fill the building’s ancillary galleries. (Current ones include Evangeline: Evolution of an Icon and a solo exhibit by figurative oil painter Douglas Bourgeois.) The main building shares a six-acre, live oak-shaded campus with historic structures each filled with displays and artifacts: The Aillet House, circa 1830, is a raised and galleried sugar planter’s cottage with bousillage walls; three cabins from Allendale Plantation reflect the lifestyles of the African Americans who lived in the quarters, a Reconstruction-era cabin, and a sharecroppers’ cabin; the Arbroth Plantation Store reflects rural farm life in the early twentieth century; a Juke Joint spotlights local Blues musicians, instruments, and artworks; the Reed shotgun house exemplifies early twentieth century vernacular architecture; a barn that houses the 1964 industry-changing Julien Sugar Cane Planter and vintage farming implements.

The West Baton Rouge Museum’s Juke Joint interprets the rich blues heritage of the area, which was centered around the juke joins that provided relief to workers coming in from the sugar cane fields; and drinks to East Baton Rouge parish residents, whose parish was dry on Sundays.

Photo courtesy of the West Baton Rouge Museum.

The Town of Addis Museum

Eight miles downriver in the old railroad town of Addis, west of LA 1 is the tiny Addis Museum in the 1920 redbrick Bank of Addis building facing the still-active railroad tracks. The collection of local interest artifacts reflects the town’s importance on the transcontinental rail route between New Orleans and the west coast, and includes railroading memorabilia—vintage tickets, train photos, signal lights, and more—as well as displays on town history, Mardi Gras, and local war veterans.

The Iberville Museum

The old river town of Plaquemine boasts two museum attractions just across the street from each other. The Iberville Museum, housed in the 1848 Courthouse Building, is a grandma’s attic of collected Iberville Parish history, stories of diverse and worthy parish residents and Louisiana’s high school boxing history, cases of vintage tools, cooking implements, and much more. Out back is an extensive Atchafalaya Basin exhibit, introducing visitors to the swamp’s unique way of life through audio-visuals and panels as well as a swamper’s cabin, artifacts, maps, and environmental information about this threatened area.

The Iberville Museum, housed in the 1848 Courthouse Building, is a grandma’s attic of collected Iberville Parish history, stories of diverse and worthy parish residents and high school boxing champs, cases of vintage tools, cooking implements, and much more.

Photo courtesy of the Iberville Museum.

The Plaquemine Lock State Historic Site

The most visible element of the Plaquemine Lock State Historic Site is the Dutch colonial-style lockhouse, perched above the 1909 Plaquemine Lock that linked the Mississippi River and Bayou Plaquemine. The lock was engineered by Panama Canal designer Colonel George W. Goethals, and the lockhouse exhibits relate to the use and mechanics of the lock and the commerce that passed through at this important confluence. Wander the site’s spacious grounds to see relic features of the old lock, a collection of traditional boats, and a spectacular Mississippi River overlook.

River Road African American Museum

From Plaquemine, LA 1 arrives at Donaldsonville and the River Road African American Museum. Housed in an old cottage in the historic district, the museum offers artifacts and displays about the lives, stories, and contributions of area African Americans. It was founded in 1994 at Tezcuco Plantation in Burnside by Ascension Parish native Kathe Hambrick, who moved home from California and discovered that the stories of African Americans were not being told along the River Road.

After a fire destroyed Tezcuco, the museum and collections moved to Donaldsonville in 2003, attracting a broad audience which includes the descendants of enslaved people who can learn about their South Louisiana history. Exhibits focus on the history of slavery, music, moss ginning, Louisiana cooking, the history of voting, and meanings of freedom, plus more.

An adjacent outdoor space hosts live music and a contiguous shed houses the exhibit Purchased Lives, about New Orleans slave auctions. Two nearby historic buildings are in progress: a Rosenwald School, to be renovated as a community center and educational space, and the True Friends Benevolent Hall, planned to be a music school and performance venue.

Whitney Plantation Museum

Whitney Plantation Museum is on a late eighteenth century plantation property re-envisioned as a museum complex dedicated to the history of slavery and opened in 2014. Numerous outbuildings, some original to the Whitney, others acquired from nearby properties, present stories of slavery on Southern Louisiana sugarcane plantations, and especially those of the enslaved people who worked the fields of Whitney, showcasing the details of their lives and the impact of slavery on the area. Whitney’s possession of eleven such structures worthy of the National Register for Historic Places includes: an original kitchen, a mule barn, a pigeonnier, and a French Creole barn—the last surviving example of its kind. A memorial wall dedicated to all of Whitney’s enslaved is engraved with the names, origins, ages, and skills of over three hundred and fifty individuals—details discovered in original archives. Another memorial, called the Field of Angels, is dedicated to the 2,200 children who died while enslaved in St. John the Baptist Parish between the 1820s and 1860s.

The Whitney Plantation Museum possesses eleven outbuildings worthy of the National Historic Register, which present more nuanced stories on the experience of being enslaved in South Louisiana.

Courtesy of the Whitney Plantation Museum.

EAST BANK

1811 Kid Ory Historic House

Across the Mississippi River, on east bank River Road in the small community of LaPlace, is the 1811 Kid Ory Historic House, which opened February 2. It fills the late eighteenth century Woodland Plantation house with two stories: the largest revolt of enslaved people in American history, the 1811 Slave Rebellion, which started on the site; and the story of famed jazz trombonist and band leader Edward “Kid” Ory, who was born and raised on Woodland property in the late nineteenth century.

The house was recently renovated to reveal two rooms with original bousillage walls and wide pine flooring; these are where the rebellion exhibit is mounted. Panels, furnishings, and artifacts depict the saga of that 1811 event. “We don’t present slaves or masters here,” said John McCusker, a former Times Picayune photojournalist and the museum’s director, “…just human beings.”

McCusker wrote the definitive biography of musician Ory and orchestrated that exhibit, which documents the musician’s life from his departure from St. John Parish because there were no schools for Black students to his migration to New Orleans and success as a musician there. The rooms are crammed with memorabilia surrounding the musician’s legacy, including his trombone.

If the exhibits seem a bit bifurcated, McCusker included transitional exhibits to connect them.

One features the critical contribution of mules to the post-bellum economy (complete at one point with a live mule in a rear barn), and the second depicts the important role St. John the Baptist Parish played during Reconstruction. Also noteworthy: the museum’s tiny, but unique, gift shop sells Kid Ory vintage jazz LPs and CDs, homemade cigar box guitars, and old phonographs.

The Great River Road Steamboat Museum

Upriver in Darrow, at Houmas House, one of the best known River Road plantation mansions, is the new Great River Road Steamboat Museum. Constructed and presented in the same grand style as everything else on the property, the new edifice has soaring ceilings and an elegant entrance. According to curator Jim Blanchard, who designed both the building and exhibit, the museum is a pictorial presentation of life along the Mississippi River, including architecture, people, commerce, and lifestyle— painting a much broader stroke than its fellow River Road museums.

The Great River Road Museum at Houmas House is a pictorial presentation of life along the Mississippi River, including architecture, people, commerce, and lifestyle.

Courtesy of The Great River Road Museum.

Wax mannequins posed in period costumes appear throughout the exhibition space, which is reminiscent of a steamboat’s grand ballroom, complete with a stage and piano at the far end. The museum’s large central space is dedicated to an exhibit about the River Road’s history with details and images of many plantations and buildings located along the river over two centuries.

Perimeter exhibits feature the Civil War, New Orleans Mardi Gras, Reconstruction, sugar, slavery, the Lemann department store in Donaldsonville, steamboat models and pictures, Evangeline and the Acadians, ironwork, woodworking implements, maps, and more. Most of the exhibitions’ period furniture, decorative items, and artifacts came from Houmas House, the personal collections of Blanchard and plantation owner Kevin Kelly, and loans from other collectors.

As I wandered through one day, I decided to approach the only other visitor, a middle aged man in jeans and a sweatshirt. When I asked about his impression of the museum, he grinned. “Nothing like this in the Texas panhandle,” he drawled, clearly dazzled.

The National Hansen's Disease Museum

On the outskirts of the village of Carville is the site of the National Hansen’s Disease Museum. Although the museum itself remains closed due to COVID-19 restrictions, for now visitors are welcome to follow a map (offered both onsite and online at neworleanshistorical.org) and drive the grounds of this unique community that for a century housed the only institution in the continental United States serving people with leprosy. The tour is worthwhile, but a visit to the museum, housed in the old staff dining hall, puts it in more meaningful context. Through an astonishing collection of institutional and personal artifacts, photographs, and records, the museum presents not only the facility’s history but also how patients and their physicians lived and coped, as well as the culture that existed in this very real community. I was very lucky when researching my story on Carville for my book, River Road Rambler (LSU Press 2013), to have been led through the museum by one of the last surviving residents and Hansen’s Disease patients at Carville.

The National Hansen’s Disease Museum in Carville, Louisiana presents the history of the country’s only institution serving people with leprosy. Because of the disease’s stigma, nothing was allowed to leave the property, including Coca Cola bottles, which were recycled in the Center’s gardens.

Lucie Monk Carter

The Timbermill Museum

The Timbermill Museum in the old lumber town of Garyville is not quite open again but its supporters are hopeful. The museum, in the headquarters of the Lyon Cypress Lumber Company, celebrated the cypress lumber industry that thrived during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In 2015, the state returned the museum to a local nonprofit that is currently working to restore the building and exhibits. The latter includes archival papers and photographs, period equipment and machinery, and even a remnant cypress board milled from the thousand-year-old cypress that resourced the business. An annual fundraiser in Garyville, set to be held on October 10 this year, benefits the museum’s reopening.

Mary Ann Sternberg is a longtime freelance writer and nonfiction author; her books include Along The River Road; River Road Rambler; River Road Rambler Returns; and Winding Through Time (Bayou Manchac).

West Baton Rouge Museum

845 N. Jefferson Ave. Port Allen.

(225) 336-2422

westbatonrougemuseum.org

Addis Museum

7821 Harris Avenue, Addis.

(225) 687-4844

Iberville Museum

57735 Main Street, Plaquemine.

(225) 687-7197

ibervillemuseum.org.

Plaquemine Lock State Historic Site

57730 Main Street, Plaquemine.

(225) 687-7158

plaquemine.org/194/Plaquemine- Lock-State-Historic-Site

River Road African American Museum

165 Charles Street, Donaldsonville.

(225) 474-5553

africanamericanmuseum.org.

Whitney Plantation Museum

5099 LA 18 Edgard.

(225) 265-3300.

whitneyplantation.org

1811 Kid Ory Historic House

1128 LA 628, LaPlace.

(985) 359-7300.

1811kidoryhistorichouse.com

National Hansen’s Disease Museum

5440 Point Clair Rd. Carville.

(225) 642-1950.

hrsa.gov/hansens-disease/

Great River Road Steamboat Museum

40136 LA 942, Darrow.

(225) 473-9380

houmashouse.com/great-riverroad-steamboat-museum

Timbermill Museum

148 Museum St. Garyville

facebook.com/garyvilletimbermillmuseum