Ducournau Building

The building's story is told in its deeds. Its site was part of an 1818 land grant to Joseph Tauzin, who came from France in 1776, and in 1820 Francois LaFonte bought it, ran a business there until 1847 and lived upstairs. Alfred Daugerot, his partner, followed; later owners included Daugerot's widow Adele in 1852, Victor Durand in 1863 and J. A. Ducournau in 1881, whose name the building carries. Accounts date the structure from 1820 to 1847. After a fire, owners who bought it in 1977 rebuilt the interior and kept much of the original structure.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Natchitoches Historic District — 0.7 mi
  The riverfront blocks of the oldest permanent settlement in the Louisiana Purchase, founded in 1714 at a Natchitoches village, with a brick-paved Front Street, Cane River frontage and the largest bousillage construction in the South.
• Fort St. Jean Baptiste State Historic Site — 0.7 mi
  A reconstruction of the 1716 French fort beside the Natchitoches village, with a palisade of nearly 2,000 pine logs, a chapel and storeroom, and living-history programs, open Wednesday to Sunday.
• Cane River Creole National Historical Park — 8.4 mi
  Oakland and Magnolia, two Cane River cotton plantations kept as they stood, told through the enslaved families who worked them, the 1864 and 1804 freedom seekers and the tenant farmers who stayed into the 1960s.
• Los Adaes State Historic Site — 13 mi
  The Spanish presidio that was the capital of Texas from 1729 to 1770, some 15 miles from French Natchitoches, now an archaeological site where Native pottery is the most abundant find.

More markers nearby

• Roque House (circa 1797) — steps away
• Great Red River Flood of 1945 — steps away
• Natchitoches Historic District — steps away
• Louis Juchereau de St. Denis (1676-1744) — steps away