The Dark Store

Very soon, another piece of Natchitoches history will pass into memory. Unfortunately, it’s a piece most of us have already forgotten.

I was as guilty as anyone a few years ago when Ms. Saidee Newell came to me with a writing project. “We have to save the Dark Store,” she said.

“Of course!” I said, racking my brain to remember where I had heard that name before. One didn’t argue with Saidee about such things, though. A day later, I was writing a nomination to the Louisiana Trust for Historic Preservation, reasoning why a building that looked like a giant lunchbox should be placed on their 2007/2008 Most Endangered Sites list.

A building in public memory

For most of the 20th century, the structure provided furniture and antiques for the homes of Natchitoches. Located at the corner of Third and Lafayette streets, the building served as a significant retail center in the town. The old Sanborn insurance maps clearly document it in surveys from 1914, 1923 and 1930.

Today, the building looks pretty lonely as the sites around it have become enveloped into the Events Center infrastructure. Despite its placement on the Louisiana Trust’s Most Endangered List, and a valiant effort by Saidee Newell and Sharon Gahagan, the stars never aligned for the structure to be moved and preserved. The City of Natchitoches recently announced plans to demolish it.

Salvage and three-dimensional documentation

This story has two bright spots. First, its materials will reportedly be used in the preservation of other structures, such as Yucca House at Melrose Plantation. Second, the building will be preserved digitally. Students in the Master of Arts in Heritage Resources program at NSU will be scanning the structure with a $70,000 piece of equipment the department recently received as part of a grant. Students will use the scanner to create a scale 3-D computer-based digital model that can be added to the structure’s history and researched in the future.

We already know a good bit about the site’s history from old-fashioned legal records. The earliest documented owner for this site was Mrs. Philippine Kahn, whose name appears as owner from a Natchitoches conveyance dated 1879. Kahn sold the property in 1921 to Ida Hughes, who married Isadore Raphiel. Their child, Stella, inherited the property before marrying Jacob Lieber. Lieber’s Bargain Store was incorporated in 1933 and was one of many stores owned and operated by the town’s then-burgeoning Jewish population. Using the downstairs for retail space, Lieber converted the upstairs into two rental apartments, enclosing one side of the balcony.

Both Stella and Jacob were buried in Natchitoches’s Jewish cemetery after their deaths in 1946 and 1964, respectively, and ownership was left to Lieber’s second wife, who rented the store to Don Dark, Sr. and Weldon Lewis. For decades following, the store specialized in furniture and antiques shipped from Europe that were bought at auctions near the port of New Orleans. In 1986, Don Dark, Jr., purchased the store his family had been renting. He in turn sold the property to the City of Natchitoches in 2004 when the town initiated plans for the events center.

The building’s still-strong frame remains a testament to its sturdy construction despite vandalism and vagrancy. However, its structural strength is no defense against the immediate pressures of growth that surround it. It may have been plain, but there’s still something to be said for a heritage resource that played a part in the everyday lives of Natchitoches citizens for so many years.