LCV Winter 2013-14 - (Page 80)

WEST BATON ROUGE MUSEUM RESTORES THE ARBROTH COMMUNITY STORE R The Arbroth Store was moved from its original location and placed among other historical builldings at the West Baton Rouge Museum in Port Allen. function in their time, selling clothes, foodstuffs, medicines, farming gear, hardware, veterinary supplies, oil, gasoline and auto parts. Almost any conceivable item could be found tucked high on one of the shelves or piled atop sacks, barrels, and cartons of surplus merchandise. Tobacco products were especially popular and included cigars and cigarettes, loose leaf for pipes and hand-rolling, snuff, and plugs. Alcoholic beverages, such as cold beer, bottled whiskey, cheap "muscat" wine and even high-proof cough and cold remedies, were also favorites. Children with a penny or nickel could buy packaged cakes and cookies, cold drinks, hard candy or soft peppermint sticks. Such country stores were eminently accessible to potential consumers, operating on cash, credit, paper "scrip," plantation tokens and even barter, with furs, pelts and pecans common items of trade. The Arbroth store, though, was much more than a simple, one-stop grocery. It was a community gathering place, a landmark where gossip and news could be shared and problems fretted over. Plantation workers drew their weekly payroll from a side office, while a large addon opposite served as a segregated "saloon" WEST BATON ROUGE MUSEUM where patrons could play cards, talk and 845 N. Jefferson Avenue, Port Allen, LA 70767 * (225) 336-2422; drink beer or whiskey. The post office, in toll-free (888) 881-6811* www.westbatonrougemuseum.com operation until 1951, allowed local people to HOURS: Tuesday - Saturday, 10 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.; Sunday 2 p.m. - 5 p.m. communicate with far-off family and friends, ADMISSION: $4 per person; $2 for students and senior citizens; free for residents of West Baton Rouge Parish. receive subscriptions to popular national magazines or newspapers, and order TOURS: For information on scheduling a group tour, dial the phone numbers listed above and press extension 18. consumer goods from businesses all over Groups may range from 5 to 150 in number. Hands-on history programs are offered free of charge to complement guided tours. These include archeological digs, writing with quill and ink, historical artifact reading, open-hearth cooking the country. In short, the Arbroth store demonstrations, butter churning, Native American pottery, wash-tub relays and more. functioned as both the center of plantation 80 LOUISIANA ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES * Winter 2013-14 WEST BATON ROUGE MUSEUM ecently opened at the West Baton Rouge Museum in Port Allen, the Arbroth Mercantile Company Plantation Store features exhibits and artifacts that interpret the store's heyday from the 1920s to the 1950s when it served as the center of a small farming community along the River Road. The building complements the collection of vernacular structures from around West Baton Rouge Parish that have been relocated to the museum campus, including the antebellum Aillet House, a circa-1850 cypress slave cabin and early 20th-century cane workers' quarters from Allendale Plantation. The museum acquired the Arbroth store from Jo Ann Busse, whose parents and grandparents had maintained it for decades as a key corollary to their planting and cattle operations before finally closing the business about 1980. Concerned about potential vandalism, fire and continued physical deterioration, Busse donated the building on the condition that it be relocated and restored. The move took place in June 2009. Now, after a thorough renovation and the installation of interpretive exhibits, the brightly painted green-and-red country store provides 21st-century visitors access to the increasingly distant world of rural Louisiana in the decades before and immediately after World War II. Plantation stores like this one from the Arbroth community, located about 15 miles upriver from Port Allen, served a vital  https://www.facebook.com/LAMuseums http://www.westbatonrougemuseum.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of LCV Winter 2013-14

LCV Winter 2013-14

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