National Register Listing

Assumption Parish Courthouse and Jail

4809 LA 1, Napoleonville, LA

The Assumption Parish Courthouse and jail are locally significant because they are landmarks within the architectural patrimony of that South Louisiana parish.

Assumption is one of Louisiana's older parishes, having been legally established in 1807.
Its early population consisted of persons of French, Spanish, Acadian, and German descent. This mixture was expanded by the addition of Anglo-Americans after Louisiana became, first a territory (1803), and finally a full-fledged state within the United States (1812). Agriculture has always been the parish's economic mainstay, with sugar cane the dominating crop. Perhaps as a result of its rural focus, the parish has never developed large communities. It appears that Napoleonville did not become the parish seat until 1818 when Maxill and Caroline Bourg donated a tract of land along the west bank of Bayou Lafourche to serve as the permanent location for the courthouse. Before that date parish leaders had held court wherever they pleased, including one site on the east bank of the bayou three miles south of town. The site donated by the Bourgs has remained the location of the courthouse, perhaps because the Bourgs stipulated in their act of donation that the land should revert to their heirs if the seat of justice should ever be moved.

Despite its long history, Assumption Parish has few real architectural landmarks. This is partly due to its very rural nature, with the small town of Napoleonville being the only place of any size, and its population is only 802. The Division of Historic Preservation's Standing Structures Survey for the parish records approximately 2,000 buildings defined as historic (50 years old or more). According to survey records, the vast majority of Assumption's residences consist of small Creole cottages, shotguns, bungalows, and simple versions of Queen Anne Revival and Eastlake cottages. A handful of the latter display well-developed gallery decoration, and a few houses have projecting Queen Anne bays. Nevertheless, most of the parish's domestic architecture can only be described as undistinguished. The survey also shows that, for the most part, the region's commercial buildings also fall into the undistinguished category. Against this background, the parish's few landmark buildings assume added importance. These include two major antebellum Greek Revival plantation houses found along Bayou Lafourche, one otherwise simple cottage whose major feature is a large octagonal turret reflecting the influence of the Queen Anne Revival style, a handful of architecturally important churches, two historic school buildings (one a restrained version of the Beaux Arts style, the other displaying a restrained Neo-Classical design), a small Neo-Classical style bank, two Romanesque commercial buildings, and the Italian villa style parish courthouse with its accompanying Italianate jail. And the courthouse assumes additional importance because it is the only building in the parish to be articulated in the Italian villa mode. This is in marked contrast to the Italianate as it is typically found in the parish and indeed the state as a whole--i.e., a symmetrical building to which Italianate details have been applied. With its picturesque asymmetrical villa-like articulation, the courthouse is easily one of the parish's most convincing renditions of the popular revival styles of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The jail, with its complementary styling, adds to the overall architectural interest of the property. As landmarks of Assumption Parish's architectural heritage, the courthouse and jail are legitimate candidates for National Register listing.

Local significance of the building:
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1997.