Louisiana Square

The square held a congregation as well as a courthouse. Jews from Germany and Alsace came to Donaldsonville as merchants, and in 1860 twenty-five members formed the Hebrew Bikur Cholim of the Parish of Ascension. They finished a synagogue in 1871 and dedicated it in June 1872. Marx Schoenberg, a German-born mayor of the Reconstruction years, was killed in 1870 in a dispute over counting ballots. Services faded after 1908, the congregation disbanded in the early 1950s, and the building was sold in 1955. A hardware store occupies it now.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• E. D. White Historic Site — 20 mi
  A National Historic Landmark house of about 1790 on Bayou Lafourche, built by enslaved people and home to two Whites, a governor and a Chief Justice, with an exhibit on the bayou's history.
• Whitney Plantation — 21 mi
  A museum on a former sugar plantation along the River Road that tells its story through the people who were enslaved there, with memorials to 107,000 enslaved Louisianans and 2,200 children.
• LSU Rural Life Museum — 23 mi
  Four slave cabins moved from Welham Plantation and a working-plantation row of more than twenty saved buildings, on land the Burden family held as Windrush plantation since the 1830s.
• Wetlands Acadian Cultural Center — 24 mi
  A Jean Lafitte National Historical Park center on Bayou Lafourche with Acadian and bayou-life exhibits, a 200-seat theater and ranger-guided boat tours to the E. D. White house.

More markers nearby

• Donaldsonville — steps away
• Francis T. Nicholls — steps away
• All Roads Lead to Donaldsonville — 0.2 mi
• Bicentennial Jazz Plaza — 0.2 mi