Roseland Terrace Historic District

About this property

The Garden District is a residential neighborhood located in Baton Rouge's Mid-City area where Park Boulevard intersects Government Street. The Garden District is an established historic area with many upscale homes and an active civic association . The Garden District is actually a conglomerate of three historic districts as defined by the Louisiana National Register of Historic Places. They are Roseland Terrace, Drehr Place, and Kleinert Terrace. Roseland Terrace is bounded by Government, 18th, Myrtle, and 22nd Streets. Placed on the National Register in 1982, it dates from between 1911 and 1930. The 65 acres (26 ha) area comprises a total of 346 resources, of which 302 are contributing properties. Almost all of the properties are one and two-story residences. The contributing Reiley-Reeves House on Park Avenue is also individually listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Baton Rouge's first subdivision, Roseland Terrace, was "staked out" in 1911 by the Zadok Realty Company, which had bought the land in 1910 for the sum of $50,000. Prior to this time, the area had been a racetrack and had a decidedly rural character. The fence surrounding the track was covered with wild Cherokee roses. Stories are told that people warned Zadok Realty that the lots would never sell because they were too far out in the country. A citywide contest was held to name the development, and the winning entry was Roseland Terrace, in honor of the Cherokee roses in the area. To continue this theme, the streets were given flower names. The Zadok Realty Company made a deliberate effort to preserve and enhance the bucolic nature of the area by, for example, planting trees and hiding the telephone poles in the back alleyways. The company's ads boasted that there would be no telephone poles in the streets, but instead that they would be placed in the alleyways behind the residences so that everyone would be spared from "an unsightly conglomeration of poles and wires." Another ad guaranteed prospective buyers freedom from "a century's haphazard, careless growth." Zadok Realty Company's promotional campaign was obviously successful because after two years they had sold 408 lots at prices ranging from $150 to $500. As can be seen in the extant houses in the district, Roseland Terrace hit its peak of popularity in the late teens and the 1920s. By around 1930 development was virtually complete. The earliest houses reflect the Queen Anne Colonial Revival influence of the late nineteenth century. These houses have features such as small fluted columns, curved galleries, semioctagonal bays, and relatively elaborate rooflines. Building in Roseland Terrace underwent a boom between about 1917 and 1930. During this period large numbers of bungalows were constructed. The basic bungalow is a raised, pitched roof, frame structure, 2 rooms wide and 3 rooms deep. The plan is hall less and has wide openings between the public rooms. In all but a few cases there is some sort of front porch. Some have half porches and some have full porches.

Location

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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