Le Vieux Presbytere
205 Rue Iry Lejeune, Church Point, LALe Vieux Presbytere is of state significance in the area of architecture as a rare and important example of a method of construction associated with Louisiana's very significant French Creole architectural tradition.
Bousillage construction is a primary characteristic of Louisiana's Creole architectural heritage. In this building technique, frame walls, with French joinery, are infilled with a combination of clay, Spanish moss, and sometimes animal hair. Once this material is in place within a wall, it dries and hardens to form a solid structure which, in many ways, is analogous to reinforced concrete. Bousillage construction, as it was practiced in Louisiana, should be viewed as the lineal descendent of a medieval European form of construction known as half-timbering. In this case, mud and Spanish moss were substituted for the lime, plaster, and straw used in half-timbering.
Le Vieux Presbytere is a significant example of this building tradition in two respects:
1) Of the roughly 200 surviving examples in Louisiana, virtually all are only one story. The Division of Historic Preservation is aware of only one other bousillage structure in the state of more than one story (the two-story Prudhomme-Rouquier House in Natchitoches).
2) Perhaps of even greater interest is the building's extremely late date of construction (1887) -- i.e., in the era of industrial lumbering when it would have been much easier to use milled lumber and balloon frame construction. In this, Le Vieux Presbytere shows the extraordinarily long time this ancient building tradition persisted in rural Louisiana despite technological advancements. In short, here is a building from 1887 constructed in the same manner as a building from the early colonial period. The staff of the Division of Historic Preservation knows of only a very few other examples of bousillage construction from a comparable date.
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1997.
The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the Nation’s historic places worthy of preservation. Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America’s historic and archeological resources.