Beauregard Town

Beauregard Town. Established in 1806. , Beauregard Town founder Elias Toutant Beauregard was a retired military officer from New Orleans who became fascinated by neighborhood development. After buying a large parcel of land in Baton Rouge, Beauregard envisioned a community that would mimic the characteristics of a European city., Beauregard Town was drawn in 1806 by Arsene LaCarriere LaTour , a French engineer, who was inspired by a popular European Baroque style known as the Grand Manner Plan. The design incorporated both beauty and functionality. Grand radial avenues connected town squares and parks to civic buildings. Only a handful of examples of Grand Manner Plan remain in North America, the most famous is Pierre Charles L'Enfant's 1791 design of Washington, DC., Beauregard Town's early design included parks, residences, a convent, hospital, coliseum, cemetery and a cathedral. The original borders for the neighborhood were the Mississippi River and North, South and East Boulevards. Its east-west streets were named after countries or continents, and those that ran north-south were named after European nobility., While drawn in 1806, Beauregard Town's houses and structures were slow to start, but by 1926, new buildings and residences appeared. By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the neighborhood was thriving, even though much of its original vision had not been met., In the 1960s preservationists began to call attention to Beauregard Town's rare features. Many residents began cataloguing the significance of each neighborhood structure. In 1980 it was added to the National Register of Historic Places., Today, Beauregard Town, home to restored residences, significant architecture, and mixed use design, is one of Baton Rouge's most popular neighborhood.