Justin Gras

Justin Gras was born in 1868 in Embrun, in the French Alps, and came to Shreveport in 1891 at 23 to help his uncle Justin Ricou, a grocer; by his own telling he spoke no English and had about a nickel. He opened his own store in 1895. National Prohibition forced him to stop selling whiskey in 1920, and he could sell it again in 1934. In 1954 Pope Pius XII gave him the Benemerenti Award for gifts to his home village and its cathedral. He died in 1959, aged 91, and left his estate to the community.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Shreveport Municipal Auditorium — 0.2 mi
  The Art Deco hall of 1929 where the Louisiana Hayride went out over KWKH from 1948 to 1960 and where Elvis Presley first played Shreveport on October 16, 1954.
• Spring Street Museum — 0.2 mi
  An 1866 bank building downtown that also held a Freedman's Savings and Trust branch in 1870, now a free LSUS-run museum with a Victorian parlor and the original vault.
• Shreveport Water Works Museum — 0.6 mi
  An 1887 brick pumping station on McNeill Street where Worthington steam pumps ran until 1980, now a free museum and a National Historic Landmark.
• Louisiana State Exhibit Museum — 2.9 mi
  A circular Art Deco museum of 1939 on the Shreveport fairgrounds, with a 1,000-year-old Caddo log boat, rotunda murals and dioramas of early Caddo Parish.

More markers nearby

• Selber Bros — steps away
• Strand Theatre — steps away
• First Jewish Cemetery — steps away
• Old B'nai Zion Temple — 0.2 mi