Butler's Drug Store / Pharmacie Butler

Lee Arthur Butler was born in 1868 near Arnaudville, in St. Martin Parish, to a family working as farm laborers. Between 1920 and 1930 he acquired a Freetown residence and grocery, and his drug store operated in the former grocery beside his house at 411 Gordon Street. It sold ice cream, filled prescriptions and was a gathering place, remembered for large vanilla cones for children. He was elected secretary-treasurer of the Louisiana Medical, Dental and Pharmaceutical Association in 1920, and the 1940 Lafayette directory lists him as superintendent of Good Hope Sanitarium.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Vermilionville — 1.2 mi
  A living-history village of about 23 acres on Bayou Vermilion in Lafayette, opened in 1990 to interpret the Native peoples, Acadians, Creoles and people of African descent of the Attakapas region.
• Cypress Island Preserve at Lake Martin — 6.9 mi
  Nearly 10,000 acres of bottomland hardwood and cypress-tupelo swamp at the south end of Lake Martin, owned by The Nature Conservancy, with a boardwalk and a rookery of egrets, spoonbills and alligators.
• Longfellow-Evangeline State Historic Site — 13 mi
  A bayou-side state site on former Attakapas hunting ground, with a raised Creole cottage of about 1815, a reproduction 1800 farmstead and its slave quarters, and the story behind Longfellow's Evangeline.
• St. Martin de Tours Catholic Church — 13 mi
  The Mother Church of the Acadians, founded in 1765 on St. Martin Square in St. Martinville, with a late 1870s Lourdes grotto and, a block away, the Evangeline Oak on Bayou Teche.

More markers nearby

• Good Hope Hall — steps away
• Martin's Hat Shop — steps away
• Pavy Studio — steps away
• Bendel Housekeeper's Home — steps away