Washington Museum

Jacob Plonsky, a Jewish merchant from Prussia, built the home and store at 203 Main Street around 1870, later known as the Klaus Store. His Plonsky Opera House and Store burned in 1902, and the brick of the museum now on this block came from it. Another Plonsky house, from about 1904 at 408 Main Street, serves as the municipal library. The family's name survives in the town's masonry, though the opera house that gave a bayou port its theater does not.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Le Vieux Village and the Venus House — 5.9 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.
• Prairie Acadian Cultural Center — 24 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.
• Atchafalaya Welcome Center — 27 mi
  A state welcome center inside the Atchafalaya Basin, the nation's largest river swamp, with exhibits on Basin history and life, a film, a crawfishing boat and French-speaking staff.
• Louisiana State Penitentiary Museum — 36 mi
  The Angola museum outside the penitentiary gate, opened in 1997 on the history of crime and punishment in Louisiana, on ground where convicts were leased out as what 64 Parishes calls legal slave labor.

More markers nearby

• Leon Wolff Mercantile — steps away
• Steamboat Warehouse — steps away
• Washington — steps away
• Bayou Courtableau — 0.2 mi