Old Rapides Bank Building

A bank became a gallery here. The Alexandria Museum of Art opened in 1977 in the Rapides Bank and Trust Company Building, a Renaissance Revival structure the National Register listed on May 15, 1980. In 1998 the museum added a grand foyer and offices as an annex, and the next year it was honored as an Outstanding Arts Organization in the Louisiana Governor's Arts Awards. In 2007 it signed an agreement with Louisiana State University of Alexandria, and the building now serves as a downtown campus for LSUA classes.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Arna Bontemps African American Museum — steps away
  The restored Alexandria house where the Harlem Renaissance writer Arna Bontemps was born in 1902, on the Louisiana African American Heritage Trail.
• Forts Randolph and Buhlow State Historic Site — 0.9 mi
  Two Confederate earthen forts on the Red River at Pineville, built with enslaved labor and never attacked, beside the remains of Bailey's Dam.
• Kent Plantation House — 2.4 mi
  Rapides Parish's oldest known standing building, a Creole house with a February tour and a 2023 memorial that put the enslaved first.
• Louisiana Maneuvers and Military Museum — 4.7 mi
  A National Guard museum in a replica WWII barracks at Camp Beauregard, built around the huge 1940-41 war games in Central Louisiana. Free.

More markers nearby

• Rapides Parish Governors — steps away
• Red River — steps away
• Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback — steps away
• Thomas Courtland Manning — steps away