Mud, moss and memories on display at Le Vieux Presbytere

If it weren’t for the efforts of the Cajuns Ladies of Church Point, The Le Vieux Presbytere could have very well been moved out of the small town or simply would have been demolished.
In the early 1990s, the historic building had to be relocated. Our Lady of The Sacred Heart Church was expanding and the parcel of land where the former rectory had stood for more than a hundred years, was going to be used as a new parking lot for the church.
The cost to move the historic building across the street, was going to cost around $25,0000. At the time, the town didn’t have the funding to for pay for it so the fate of Le Vieux Presbytere fell to the town’s passionate citizens who dressed up in traditional Cajun attire (long red dresses and bonnets) to help promote the town’s and region’s heritage. The group was known as the Cajun Ladies of Church Point.
“The building was going to be moved, probably to Lafayette,” remembered 78-year-old T.C. Cary. “The church couldn’t afford to keep it up and it was going to cost $25,000 to move. I remember telling the mayor that we have to try to raise the money. If we can’t raise the money then so be it but we had to try to save Le Vieux Presbytere.”
The Cajun Ladies did just that by hosting numerous fund raising efforts such as live radio shows, and hot meals on Sundays, as well out of the parish promotions. All of that work helped the group raise the majority of the funding to save the building, which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1997 and now serves as a museum for the town’s history.
“If we had lost that building what would Church Point be?” Cary asked. “We saved the building for the town and not for ourselves.”
Le Vieux Presbytere is a one and one-half story frame bousillage-style house, and serves an excellent example of French Creole architectural tradition.
The building is one of the last structures in Louisiana to use the folk craft of mud wall construction method, which is a descendent of the half-timbering method popular in Medieval Europe. The walls are filled with a combination of clay, Spanish moss, and even in some cases animal hair. After being placed inside a wall it dries and hardens like concrete.
It estimated that there are 200 surviving examples of bousillage built structures in Louisiana, but Le Vieux Presbytere is one of only two buildings with more than one story.
The other factor that makes Le Vieux Presbytere so distinctive is the fact that is was built during an era of milled lumber. Instead of utilizing the methods and products of the day, the building was built using a method that was popular a hundred years before.
“This is not a normal construction of a building from the late 1800s,” Curator Harold Fonte said. “They used a design or floor plan that was popular in the late 1700s, a French West Indies plantation style plan.”
The building came to be in the late 1800s. In 1883, the new Roman Catholic parish of Sacred Heart of Mary was established in the French Catholic community of Church Point, and Father Auguste Vincent Eby was appointed as the church’s first pastor
After the completion of the original wooden church, Father Eby then focused on the construction of a presbytere or pastoral residence.
The house with its deep galleries, large main hall, and three rooms on each side of the hallway which are interconnected, was constructed and finished in 1887.
For generations the building served as a rectory until the priests eventually relocated to another building down the street. The building though had also changed over the years as addition after addition, including a kitchen, had been added over the decades.
Those additions were not worth saving, but the original structure was worthy remembered lifelong resident, 74-year-old Dianna Richard.
“The structural integrity of the original building was still okay but it was a humongous home for the priest. It was just too big and the additions were not in great shape. The town though wanted to keep the original building. The town wanted to keep that part. The whole thing couldn’t be salvaged but that part could.”
In came the efforts of the Cajun Ladies and the rest is history.
The building, now serves as a museum that houses items that tell the story of the town, once nicknamed “Buggy Capital of the World” because of its reliance on horse and buggy transportation up until the 1950’s. The first floor is the only part of the museum that is open to the public as the second is used for storage.
Inside the church room, there are numerous items of religious significance such as a weathered photo of parishioners standing outside the old church in April of 1927, a large wooden rosary, as well as a pair of the old church’s confession doors.
There is also a commerce room which is filled with old black and white photos of former stores and businesses like John Horecky General Store and Simon’s Restaurant.
A visitor to the museum, which is free to tour, can also find bios and photos of the town’s founding fathers, and maps of the town dating back to 1935, and there is a music room that honors the town’s Cajun French musicians like Iry Lejeune and Elton “Bee” Cormier.
In the main hallway, there hangs a vibrantly colored cloth banner that is roughly 12-feet tall and 24-feet wide. The banner, which once hung in the old high school, has advertisements for several of the town’s businesses at the time such as Church Point Wholesale Grocery, Church Point Pharmacy, Bijou Theatre and Church Point Ford Motor Company.
“We want to make maximum use of the museum,” said Fonte, a New Orleans native who moved to the town with his wife in 2010. “We want to preserve the incredible history of the building but also have people come here and use this great space.”
Part of utilizing the space is having Le Vieux Presbytere serve as a place for social functions, such as Christmas pageants, Church Point High School’s homecoming, Veteran’s Days, Mardi Gras events and the Cajun French on the Porch event held Sept. 10.
Due to the efforts from keeping Le Vieux Presbytere vanish from the town’s history, the residents of the Church Point will also have a place that they can come home to.
“We have lots of people that come back to Church Point for Mardi Gras and Homecoming and they always stop by here,” Richard said. “They have so many memories when they came here as a child. It is part of who we are as residents of this town.”