Abandoned Baton Rouge

The land of Cotton's...and more

This is the former factory for Cotton's Holsum Breads, a brand which still exists. I've heard the aroma of delicious baking bread used to permeate the surrounding area.

Abandoned Baton Rouge is not abandoned

Hi all, a quick update: I am off exploring much farther-flung lands than my usual Baton Rouge beat, but the abandoned hits will keep on coming just as soon as I'm back in front of a computer on a regular basis again.

After Ed Cullen's great article in the Advocate earlier this week, the page views on this little blog shot into the stratosphere. I received emails from numerous new readers and it's been great hearing everyone's personal memories of the sites I've covered in this blog.

So thanks for the interest, keep checking back, and I'll post more as soon as I can!

The Bellemont, Part Three

Welcome back to the show. Please start with Parts One and Two, if you haven't already seen them.

Back at the main entryway, we took that left, which looks like this (not our car):



And the wedge between the 9 o'clock and noon views from the entryway looks like this:

 

The Bellemont, Part Two

If you haven't already, please see Part One of The Bellemont here.

We weren't expecting the interior area of the Bellemont to be so expansive. Here's the drive leading into the interior, complete with a tree growing out of the roof.



Here's the straight-ahead view from the main road in.




We could have branched off to the left, but first we cut straight across the campus. The further into the complex we got, the more likely it seemed that we were being watched, just because there were so many places there to be watched from.

The Bellemont

The Bellemont was an Antebellum, Colonial, plantation-style hotel and convention center built in 1946, according to a Yahoo travel listing that doesn't yet know it's closed.

 

This enormous complex is empty now...kind of. (See that car? Not ours. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.) Thankfully I had a new abandoned co-explorer to help me braven up for this mission.

 
 

Beauty School Dropout

D-Jay's School of Beauty is one of the few businesses featured here on ABR that still exists elsewhere, such as Mitiello's, Shell, and Winn-Dixie. They even have a website on the Internets. However, the beauty school dropped out of this particular Government Street Location.

Judging by this sign, their move must have happened around the time of laser discs.

(To the sellers/leasers: Here's a tip I learned from HGTV existing: this property might move faster if you clear out the burned-up garbage from the front area. Just a thought.)

I Love You Sugar Kane: Historic Cinclare Plantation

My first expedition with co-urban explorer Joshua took us across the Mississippi and south, to a land dominated by old sugar cane fields and crawfish shacks. We stopped at an industrial site on the site of the former Cinclare Plantation, a onetime sugar plantation "company town."

Innocent as it looks, it was to become the site of the scariest ABR incident to date. Although admittedly I am a complete pansy as explorers go. 

Book Exchange

I stopped at the Book Exchange alone. That car isn't mine...they just accumulate in the lots of all abandoned businesses in Baton Rouge.

Three Sisters ladies' shoppe

I'm told by fellow urban explorer Josh that Three Sisters used to be a ladies' department store. I was intrigued, but when I looked up the phrases "Three Sisters," "department store," and "Baton Rouge," on Google, all that came up was obituaries. Apparently a popular job for Southern ladies who died recently was working in department stores. Also, a lot of them had three sisters.

Gone With the Sinned: Swaggart Bible College Dorm

The HQ for Jimmy Swaggart Ministries is in Baton Rouge.

It is still occupado. However, not all the buildings on its campus are. This never-completed dorm for the Jimmy Swaggart Bible College has a fence around it, so because I am a law-abiding citizen, these like, other guys named Cosh and Jo supplied me with photos.