Dominque Lalanne House and Store

Why a Dutch Colonial building with stepped gables, three front dormers and a corbelled cornice stands in south Louisiana, so soon after the Civil War, is not explained in the record. Dominique Lalanne, born in the Pyrenees in 1825, acquired the lot in October 1866; family tradition puts the cost at $75,000. Local craftsmen made the bricks and hardware, Joseph Agnelly laid the brick, and the roof is red Belgian slate. Martin Schmit and Lizzie Greenburg bought it in 1902 and ran a hotel here into the late 1930s.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Le Vieux Village and the Venus House — 5.9 mi
  A heritage park in Opelousas built around the Venus House of about 1791, the home of a free Creole woman of color, Marie Francois Venus, with an old schoolhouse, Methodist church and the visitor center's zydeco music exhibit.
• Prairie Acadian Cultural Center — 24 mi
  A National Park Service center in Eunice on the Cajun prairie, with exhibits on the Acadians who settled the prairies, a Courir de Mardi Gras display, free music and cooking demonstrations, and the shuttered Liberty Theatre nearby.
• Atchafalaya Welcome Center — 27 mi
  A state welcome center inside the Atchafalaya Basin, the nation's largest river swamp, with exhibits on Basin history and life, a film, a crawfishing boat and French-speaking staff.
• Louisiana State Penitentiary Museum — 36 mi
  The Angola museum outside the penitentiary gate, opened in 1997 on the history of crime and punishment in Louisiana, on ground where convicts were leased out as what 64 Parishes calls legal slave labor.

More markers nearby

• Washington — steps away
• Washington Museum — steps away
• Leon Wolff Mercantile — steps away
• Steamboat Warehouse — steps away