Louis de Planque

Don Luis outlived his own fame, and his grave shows it. When he died of apoplexy on May 1, 1898, the Sons of Herman buried him at Bay View. A cemetery map from about 1940 notes that he and his wife are two of the wooden markers there. His obituary called him one of the best photographers in the state and added that he never gathered much wealth. In 1872 he announced the closing of his gallery and offered porcelain photographs at five dollars each. A 1939 newspaper piece remembered him as the city's only photographer in his day.

What the plaque says

Louis de Planque Born in Prussia in April 1842, Louis de Planque immigrated to Mexico during the American Civil War era. By 1864 he was working in Matamoros and soon opened a photography studio in Brownsville, Texas. During the American Civil War, the confederate cotton trade transformed Brownsville and Matamoros into boomtowns, which helped de Planque's business. In addition to photographing both union and confederate troops stationed in the area, de Planque also sold tintypes, Cartes de Visite, frames and stereoptic equipment and slides. Despite sustaining heavy damage to both his studios and losing valuable equipment in the 1867 hurricane, he managed to photograph the storm damage. In the two years after the storm, he opened studios in Indianola and Corpus Christi. As de Planque prepared to close his Indianola studio, the 1875 hurricane struck there and he and his wife barely survived. Using a lantern show to raise money, de Planque purchased new equipment and revived his Corpus Christi studio, where he spent the rest of his career. Called "Don Luis" in Corpus Christi, the six-foot, 200-pound de Planque was known to love parties and cut a striking figure by attending many events dressed in eccentric costumes, such as leather leggings and a serape topped with a feathered tyrolean hat. Local lore stated that no local or visiting celebrity could escape a session in de Planque's studio. He died of a stroke in Corpus Christi on May 1, 1898. He married twice and trained his second wife, Frenchwoman Eugenie J. Robert, as a photographer. She continued to operate his photography business for a number of years after his death. (2014)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mirador de la Flor — 0.6 mi
  Corpus Christi's bayfront memorial to Selena Quintanilla-Pérez, the Tejano singer from this city, killed in 1995 at twenty-three, visited by about thirty thousand people a year.
• Art Museum of South Texas — 0.8 mi
  Philip Johnson's 1972 museum on the Corpus Christi bayfront, joined in 2006 by Ricardo Legorreta's Miller Wing, holding more than 2,000 works mostly from Texas and the Americas.
• Texas State Aquarium — 1.0 mi
  A nonprofit aquarium on the tip of Corpus Christi Beach built around the Gulf and the Caribbean, with the largest coastal wildlife rescue center in Texas behind the exhibits.
• USS Lexington Museum on the Bay — 1.2 mi
  An Essex-class carrier of 1943 moored off North Beach, the Blue Ghost that Tokyo Rose kept reporting sunk, and the Navy's training carrier for nearly three decades after.

More markers nearby

• Anna Moore Schwein — steps away
• John Dix — steps away
• James Downing — steps away
• Old Bayview Cemetery — steps away