The Bernard Bertrand Home

Joseph D. Bernard, a co-founder and the first mayor of Rayne, had this Italianate house built in 1881 on West South First Street, among the oldest homes in town. In 1918 he sold it to E. J. Bertrand, who ran the power plant. About 1999 it faced demolition, and it was carried to its present lot on The Boulevard instead. Now it is the Rayne Cultural Center, and it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2001.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Vermilionville — 16 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.
• Prairie Acadian Cultural Center — 19 mi
  A National Park Service center in Eunice on the Cajun prairie, with exhibits on the Acadians who settled the prairies, a Courir de Mardi Gras display, free music and cooking demonstrations, and the shuttered Liberty Theatre nearby.
• Cypress Island Preserve at Lake Martin — 22 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.
• Le Vieux Village and the Venus House — 23 mi
  A heritage park in Opelousas built around the Venus House of about 1791, the home of a free Creole woman of color, Marie Francois Venus, with an old schoolhouse, Methodist church and the visitor center's zydeco music exhibit.

More markers nearby

• Rayne Depot Square — 0.8 mi
• Jacques Weil Company — 0.9 mi
• St. Joseph's Catholic Church & Cemetery — 1.1 mi
• Louisiana Frog Company — 1.3 mi