The Master Builder of Louisiana

If you want to understand the physical bones of Louisiana, you are standing before the man who helped construct them board by board and brick by brick. His name was Powhatan H. Baird, and for decades he was remembered as the last of Louisiana’s true pioneer settlers.

Baird arrived here in November 1836, when his family traveled from Virginia by covered wagon and steamboat, landing on the riverbank just as the Mississippi was freezing over with winter ice. Frontier life was unforgiving: his family crowded into a single room, endured hardship, and lost young siblings. By age fourteen, young Powhatan was hired to carry the mail on horseback across the rugged hills of Pike and Lincoln counties—a boy so small he literally had to be lifted into the saddle.

With little chance for formal schooling, Baird enrolled in what he called the 'school of adversity.' He apprenticed as a carpenter, learning the trades of masonry, joinery, and architecture.

Over the next half-century, Powhatan Baird’s hands shaped Louisiana's golden age of construction. Working alongside builders Levi Ruggles and Henry Martz, he framed, built, or superintended many of the finest structures in town:

• The antebellum homes of William Luce, Homer Luce, Silas W Farber,
•  and Archibald M. Van Horn;
• The Presbyterian Church, the Christian Church, and the Eugene Field School;
• In 1855 he built a home for his family at 1000 Georgia Street;
• And the Baird Clothing Company, at 212, 214, and 216 Georgia, which he operated with his sons for decades.

In 1853, Baird’s brother Lafayette became one of the very first burials placed on these bluffs at Riverview Cemetery. Later in life, after losing his beloved wife Huldah, Powhatan tended this family plot with deep devotion before joining her here at age eighty-seven.

When Powhatan Baird looked down the hill toward town in his final years, nearly every corner, church spire, and brick facade held a piece of his life's labor.

When you tour Louisiana’s historic district, take a slow drive along the Georgia Street corridor admire his work on buildings that have been part of Louisiana for more than 170 years. The enduring brickwork, solid timbers, and stately facades you admire are the lasting handiwork of Powhatan Baird."