West Baton Rouge Museum

The West Baton Rouge Museum, in the city of Port Allen, tells the story of antebellum plantation life in the rural areas just west of Baton Rouge, Louisiana’s capital city. Permanent exhibits showcase early French Creole architecture and the cultivation of sugar throughout history. Outbuildings include three Antebellum-era slave cabins.

Specific structures on-site include the Aillet House, a French Creole home built circa 1830; 1850s slave cabins from Allendale Plantation; the Reed Shotgun House, built in 1938; a sugar mill from 1904; and the Arbroth Plantation Store, an 1880s structure that remained a grocery store until the 1980s.

The museum has a permanent exhibit of artifacts pertaining to 300 years of history in West Baton Rouge Parish, and it hosts traveling exhibits and special events.