In April 1910, fire moved through Lake Charles and took the city's civic and religious infrastructure with it. What replaced it arrived fast and with ambition: a new city hall by 1911, featuring terrazzo floors, pressed-tin ceilings, and Romanesque Revival arches; a Classical Revival courthouse in 1912, designed by Favrot & Livaudais out of New Orleans; and a Gothic Revival cathedral, also completed in 1912, in the heart of the Charpentier Historic District. That cathedral became the mother church of the Diocese of Lake Charles when Pope John Paul II established the diocese in 1980. The city hall held municipal offices until 2004, then became an arts center — the Black Heritage Gallery and Gallery by the Lake now occupy what were once administrative rooms. All three buildings still stand. Lake Charles has burned, and been struck by hurricanes, and rebuilt each time. These buildings are what the rebuilding looked like.
