Martin's Hat Shop

John Martin Sr. learned hat cleaning, blocking and making in New Orleans in 1915 and opened a shop at 115 Cypress Street near the train depot. Two fires that began in the clothes-pressing area destroyed it, and he rebuilt between his home and his grandmother Philomene Francois Victor's. In 1951 his son John Jr. married Thelma Goodie of Maurice. In 1976, after both men had died, friends urged Thelma to continue. She taught herself to make hats from scratch and to clean and block them, and she took orders from across the country.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Vermilionville — 1.2 mi
  A living-history village of about 23 acres on Bayou Vermilion in Lafayette, opened in 1990 to interpret the Native peoples, Acadians, Creoles and people of African descent of the Attakapas region.
• Cypress Island Preserve at Lake Martin — 6.9 mi
  Nearly 10,000 acres of bottomland hardwood and cypress-tupelo swamp at the south end of Lake Martin, owned by The Nature Conservancy, with a boardwalk and a rookery of egrets, spoonbills and alligators.
• Longfellow-Evangeline State Historic Site — 13 mi
  A bayou-side state site on former Attakapas hunting ground, with a raised Creole cottage of about 1815, a reproduction 1800 farmstead and its slave quarters, and the story behind Longfellow's Evangeline.
• St. Martin de Tours Catholic Church — 13 mi
  The Mother Church of the Acadians, founded in 1765 on St. Martin Square in St. Martinville, with a late 1870s Lourdes grotto and, a block away, the Evangeline Oak on Bayou Teche.

More markers nearby

• Good Hope Hall — steps away
• Butler's Drug Store / Pharmacie Butler — steps away
• Griffin House — steps away
• Bendel Housekeeper's Home — steps away