Judge Porter House

Thomas Fitzgerald Porter and his wife Wilhelmina built this house in 1912 in about three months for $1,500, taking apart the Blunt Lodge Hall that stood on the lot and reusing its lumber. It is an eclectic turn-of-the-century house, with a two-story wraparound gallery that suggests Queen Anne and Colonial Revival columns on brick pillars, five fireplaces and heart pine floors. Porter died in 1928 and Wilhelmina in 1935. Their daughter Betty lived here until 1962. The Rachal family began restoring it in 1987, and it opened as a bed and breakfast in 1996.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Natchitoches Historic District — steps away
  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 — 0.3 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 — 8.2 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 — 12 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

• Steel Magnolias — steps away
• Dr. John Sibley — 0.2 mi
• Prudhomme-Rouquier House — 0.3 mi
• Northwestern State University — 0.3 mi