Abandoned Baton Rouge

Red Stick Revisited

 

So I came back to the Red Stick for a weekend.

Brady Bunch/ Parks & Recreation

 

Found in a part of town heavy on the conifers and housing tracts, we have two very different sites today, each evoking a different TV show title.

Motels of Highway 61 Revisited

Well Abe says, "Where do you want this killin' done?"

God says, "Out on Highway 61."

Airline Highway in Baton Rouge, also known as the storied Highway 61, is famous for its sketchy motels. Sketchy motels are an essential part of our cultural heritage: that's where nearly all the murdering and philandering and all sorts of untoward business goes down. Just look at every movie from No Country For Old Men to...well, almost every other movie ever.

It was at one of these Airline motels a little further south, Sugar Bowl Courts, where Jimmy Swaggart met with disgrace in 1987, along with his ladyfriend the prostitute. They don't still exist in the numbers they used to, but kind of shockingly, these mom & pop motels do still exist in this era of chain hotels and motels. 

A few such establishments have already appeared here on Abandoned Baton Rouge: Ten Flags Inn and The Bellemont, the latter which you can see in happier days above. All of the historic "before" postcards in this post were found online or otherwise by Ken Freeman and posted on his website dedicated to remembering his hometown, Alexandria Retrospective. After he contacted me recently, the historic postcard section about Baton Rouge on his website gave me a new idea for finding sites for this blog: work backwards from historic photos and their addresses. Seeing those motel postcards prompted me to make a trip to Airline and see what was still standing. 

The exercise reinforced a lesson I've been learning: seek and you shall find.

Lee High School

For the past half a century until May 21 of this year, Robert E. Lee High School was in the teaching business. But now, to quote a man named Alice, school's out forever. This expedition into abandoned Baton Rouge didn't exemplify as much decay and natural reclamation that so many vacant buildings do, but we may not have the luxury of time. The school may have a date with a wrecking ball, although that doesn't seem to happen often here. If not, I'll follow up at the end of my tenure in Baton Rouge, since it doesn't take long here for nature to take hold.  But even now, it hasn't been well maintained, so it's not lacking in decay.

Downtown Hodgepodge

I spent a late afternoon wandering around downtown last week because I decided to go through with my proposed idea, Main Street, Exiled: Disappearing Downtowns, on a new blog Disappearing Downtowns. I will only be here in Louisiana about one more year, so this new blog is a way to keep up the ABR-style photography wherever I roam.

Endless Buffet of Leftovers

And now, a bunch of sites I've been meaning to post from two recent excursions, but they were trumped by the showing and telling of the time I saw coffins and the time I could have ended up in a coffin.

First, yet another car repair joint, this one on Florida and more colorful than most. Note the sinkhole in the repair floor, below. 

 

Roller rink, Barq's plant, and more

I originally spotted Leo's Roller Rink on North a few months ago to my delight, but then found this website for a Leo's rink, called it to hear a human answer, and mistakenly thought the one pictured here was still open despite all appearances. Turns out that website was for a different Leo's location, duh.

An Afternoon on Florida Road

My fiance had to check out some abandoned sites on Florida for a school project, so he brought his in-house abandonment aficionado, yours truly. It was a fast run from site to site, but we managed to get a few good shots in, and discovered one of the most morbid sites yet.

Motel Zero and the Horndog

In part one of this exciting two-part post, co-explorer Kara and I opted not to go into the green crackhouse. Instead, we went into this motel, where I'd glimpsed people inside when driving by the previous afternoon. Makes perfect sense, right?

Scenic Highway

If you find abandoned buildings, vehicles, and discarded furniture scenic, then Scenic Highway lives up to its name.

Co-explorer Kara and I arrived in this unfamiliar part of town on bicycle with her dog, Miss Lola Mae, trotting alongside for protection. 

As Kara, another newcomer by way of North Carolina, observed, it looks almost Caribbean here sometimes. I've never been, but knew what she meant.

The money shot of the day was found just past the corrugated-metal building on the left, and is found here after the jump.