A cornered history

At every street corner lies a story waiting to be told that sheds light on days gone by. The corner of Court and Magnolia Streets in Ville Platte is no exception because at that junction once stood the fabled Eagle Hotel which opened at that location in 1934.
The December 22, 1934, edition of the Ville Platte Gazette reported, “After many weeks of preparation the new Eagle Hotel, located near the courthouse, is open to guests, announces Mrs. Voorhies Fontenot, manager. The Eagle Hotel and cafe will doubtless enjoy even better patronage at its new location than it has in the past.”
Over the years, the hotel was purchased by the late Judge Preston N. Aucoin and converted to house his law office. Now, though, the building remains mostly quiet except for the sounds of KVPI blaring through the main lobby.
Current occupant, Gilbert J. Aucoin, the son of Judge Aucoin, recalls how his father took him to the hotel’s restaurant as a child before the building became a law office.
“It was almost identical to the way The Palace is in Opelousas,” Aucoin said. “We kept the plates, saucers, and the cups from the cafeteria and still have some that we use.”
Judge Aucoin purchased the building in the mid-1960s and converted it to fit his law practice. The judge and his brothers would go on the weekends to work on the building. While the work was being done, Judge Aucoin would bring Gilbert and his sister Toni to play in the building.
Most of the work being done at the time was converting the old upstairs hotel rooms in offices to be rented.
“They painted these ceilings with those roller brushes and put these square tiles on the floor,” Aucoin said. “Daddy had the great idea of painting all the doors different colors like purple, red, black, and green.”
Besides the colored doors, the tiles also stood out to the young Aucoin. He said, Even when I was little, I thought it was a little presumptuous of daddy to put his initials PNA into one of the tiles.”
Other work being done at the time was replacing an old air conditioning unit.
“My two uncles, Jimmy and Jerry, would come from Eunice to come work,” Aucoin recalled. “They were fraternal twins. Jerry was the shorter one and had legs like tree trunks. He was offered a scholarship to go play at McNeese, but he turned it down.”
Aucoin continued, “There was a 2,500-pound air conditioning unit that (Uncle Jerry) was either trying to take it off of something or put into something. Somehow, it was on his back. He was moaning loudly in pain because it was heavy, but he did whatever he had to do with it on his back.”
When Aucoin became an attorney and began his own practice inside the building, he was practicing with three other attorneys- his father; his uncle, Gilbert W. Aucoin, and former City Court Judge Donald Launey.
“When I came in here,” Aucoin said,
“we had it rolling with four lawyers in the building. It was a good time. The waiting room was full to where people had to stand. We tried to see the clients as fast as we could. The clients would smoke in the waiting room, and daddy had a Coke machine. It was just so busy that it was hard to concentrate on your work because you could hear everything. It was active.”
Remaining now are only Aucoin and his memories of what used to be.
Through the arched front entrance is the waiting room which was the hotel’s restaurant. “We still have tables and chairs from it,” Aucoin said.
On the left side of the waiting room is a door which went into Aucoin’s old office. That part of the building once served as the home of the Atlantic Finance Company and then the draft board. Past there were once the law library and conference room.
Down the hall from there, is what used to be Paul N. Fontenot’s survey office and the entrance to the old hotel coffee shop and bar area which became Judge Launey’s law office.
“When Donny’s office was the bar,” Aucoin said, “people would come down from their rooms and go to the bar.”
“We don’t use the coffee shop anymore,” he continued, “but it used to be painted red, white, and blue because daddy was a fanatic about red, white, and blue.
Around the corner from there is the staircase leading upstairs to the old hotel rooms, which are now used as storage areas.
The future of the building remains in doubt. As Aucoin said, his kids “will inherit it and do whatever they want with it.”
But what is not in doubt is what the walls would say. Aucoin concluded, “a lot of law has been decided in this building. If the walls could talk, they would just be yelling out legal terms.”