Abandoned Baton Rouge

Unveils the forgotten history of the city through over 130 images of abandoned landmarks, revealing their stories from grandeur to decay.

Around Louisiana's state capital, structures sit abandoned for years. Some of them hold memories, some hold clues to the city's history. With subjects ranging from antebellum to agri-industrial, from a rickety single-room shack to one of Huey Long's pet projects, to the last gasps of a grand ballroom, this travelogue of decay reveals some of that history and at times, some insight to the city that is today. In Abandoned Baton Rouge, discover what's been going on in forgotten spaces when no one else was looking. Learn about the establishments that once were, the high times and the low crimes. Meet the people who loved the places and find out what they kept as souvenirs. Captured in photos before they were gone are Baton Rouge institutions like The Bellemont Motor Hotel, and that ordinary building on Oklahoma Street that helped to make LSU athletics extraordinary. More than 130 images show how these places looked when they were new, not-so-new, abandoned, and on their way out of existence.

COLLEEN KANE is a writer who has worked at BUST magazine and CNBC. In between those jobs, she lived in Louisiana and created the blog Abandoned Baton Rouge. Colleen lives in Brooklyn, where nothing stays abandoned, and the Catskills, where she's explored what's left of the old Borscht Belt resorts. In the latter home, she keeps a small piece of The Bellemont's rusted decorative iron railing.