Downtown History BLOG

Echoes of Downtown Shreveport

The Joy Theater called Texas Street home for many years, occupying the space where On Time Fashion now stands. Some parts of the theater may have also been incorporated into the Robinson Film Center. Owned by Joy Houch, the theater was part of a chain of eighty theaters across Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas. Twin Blends […]

Read more

Merciful Frost Victorian Dinner, Nov. 19

Time is running out for you to get tickets to an event 150 years in the making- The Merciful Frost Victorian Banquet, the event celebrating the end of Shreveport’s 1873 Yellow Fever epidemic. Tickets to this once-in-a- sesquicentennial banquet are available now and are extremely limited. In the late summer and early fall of 1873 […]

Read more

Why the Uneeda Building is So Much More

For years, the beautiful five or six story (referred to as both in historical records) building in the 700 block of Milam Street in downtown Shreveport has been called the Uneeda Biscuit Building. The Uneeda Biscuit ad on the west wall is iconic and much loved, but that building was never owned by Uneeda Biscuit, […]

Read more

Holy Trinity Goes Interactive

Downtown’s historic Holy Trinity Catholic Church is celebrating its 150 birthday by going interactive! If you’ve ever wanted to explore the beautiful building, now you can with help from their new interactive photo tour. The tour, according to Fr. Duane Trombetta, utilizes Google 3D Indoor Streetview technology that allows you to navigate around the panoramas […]

Read more

Yellow Fever Memorial Dedicated

It was a beautiful day at historic downtown Oakland Cemetery for the Shreveport Yellow Fever 150th Commemoration Memorial Dedication. The dedication was at the site of the Yellow Fever Mound, in which nearly 800 souls lay buried, most of the nearly 25% of the population that perished in the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1873. Finally, […]

Read more

A Truss Bridge Committee – Back in Action

The Covid downtime shook up a lot of initiatives; one of them was the work of a group of citizens concerned about the future of downtown’s historic Cross Bayou A Truss Bridge. The steering committee is made up of various engineers including City of Shreveport engineer Patrick Furlong, the head of the Downtown Development Authority, […]

Read more

150 Years & a Shrine: Holy Trinity Catholic Church

This is a big and eventful year for Holy Trinity Catholic Church located at 315 Marshall Street in downtown Shreveport. The church is celebrating its 150th anniversary along with the special commemoration of the devastating Yellow Fever Epidemic in Shreveport. The church has also been designated a Minor Shrine of the Five Priests. This designation […]

Read more

Downtown Character: W.K. Henderson

Many of you know that each month at the Downtown Shreveport Artwalk we feature a segment called History in 5, a short talk about a small bit of downtown history. As the one who reads the stories and writes the talks, I can tell you that we are never lacking for interesting tales. Many of […]

Read more

The History of 509 Market Street

The History of 509 Market Street: Reaching for the Sky When Peter Youree was named president of Shreveport’s Commercial National Bank 125 years ago, he had seen a lot. He’d been wounded in the Battle of Shiloh during the Civil War, had married Betty Scott and fathered two children, had owned and managed Shreveport’s first […]

Read more

Yellow Fever 150th Commemoration Plans

One of the buildings that was around during the horror of Shreveport’s 1873 Yellow Fever Epidemic was the setting for the press event officially announcing the Yellow Fever 150 Year Commemoration this week. In the 1870’s, the current Spring Street Museum at 525 Spring Street was a bank. Today, it survives to help tell the […]

Read more