Ouachita Citizen, May 26, 1933, Page 1
CITY’S LARGEST BUILDING RAZED: ONE-TIME GATHERING PLACE FOR STOCKMEN NOW ONLY A MEMORY
Big Structure, Its Usefulness Ended By the Universal Acceptance of the Motor Car, and Damaged By Elements and Age, is Salvaged for Building Material
Another old landmark is gone from West Monroe. For years it stood, the city’s largest building, at the conjunction of Wood and Riverfront streets. Built many years ago, before the days of tractors, trucks and passenger cars, it was headquarters for the stockmen of this section and in its day has housed thousands of horses and mules on their way from Missouri and other states to the farms and industrial centers of Northeast Louisiana.
For many years, while operated by O.O. Clark, buyers and sellers of horses and mules congregated there, but in recent years, the demand for four-footed power has declined and the building, covering half a blook or more, has been used as a storage place for cotton, as a storage house for household goods in times of overflow, and, more recently, since winds have damaged the roof and age has taken its toll, the big building has stood unoccupied.
It wasn’t a pretty building; there was nothing about it to arouse admiration except its giant size, and yet it is missed. Things somehow don’t seem the same around there – perhaps because they are not.
I never knew West Monroe had a stock barn in the heart of what became Antique Alley! I know it was a cotton yard in the mid to late 1800’s. Actually, the 1926 Sanborn map is the only one I see it on! I have found ads for the “O.O. Clark Sales Barn” as early as 1912. I don’t know why it doesn’t show up on earlier maps. The site is now an empty lot off of Commerce street in front of the condominium building. The city’s Christmas lights were once displayed here.
1926 Sanborn Fire Insurance map.
February 9, 1912 News-Star ad.
Ouachita Parish History Tidbits 