For the past three years, downtown Baton Rouge has been undergoing a revitalization effort. The Beauregard Town Office Building is one of the last strands left intact along the edge of the urban fabric that was Beauregard Town, a downtown residential district that was at its prime in the 1940s.

However, the area is now transitioning into a neighborhood composed of both residential and commercial uses. Primarily, the older homes are being converted to commercial uses, with a very few new commercial buildings mixed in.

The street on which this building is located is a main thoroughfare through downtown. In fact, the on-ramp to the interstate and the Mississippi River Bridge, the definitive boundary of the downtown district, is one-half block down the street.

One of the main design goals was to enhance the building's strengths to establish it as a recognized landmark that marks the south edge of the downtown district. To accomplish the new design would have to provide a sense of permanence and timelessness. Any structure destined to serve as a landmark for downtown Baton Rouge needed to have these essential qualities.

When the owners/architects found the building it was in a sad state of disrepair. It was clearly a house - with a front porch, fireplaces, a kitchen and bathtubs. However, the building had been used as an office for perhaps 10 years. No major renovation had taken place to accommodate this change of use; therefore, the exterior of the building was covered in a web of exposed conduit and wiring, exposed phone and computer lines cluttered the inside of the building, the stairwell and corridors were dark and unsafe.

The original house was a Builder's Foursquare. This type of home may be seen as a stripped down version of more elaborate, late 18th and mid 19th Century house types, which included the Georgian Block and the square Italianate house.

This four-square, like many of the four-square homes in the Beauregard Town District, was not of a true architectural style. It was recognizable because of its basic form and proportion, but lacked any identifiable, stylistic ornamentation other than its clay tile roof and interesting, clay chimney pots that seemed almost out of place with the simple white clapboard siding and plain red brick pilasters.

However, the pleasing proportions and interesting roof proved to be the assets upon which the architects would capitalize in order to breathe new life into the tired, old structure. They decided to accentuate these features by incorporating additional elements of the Italianate style, a style that often incorporates these very elements.

Additionally, the conversion of this rather plain building to a more stylized version of the foursquare structure seemed to bear great potential for helping the building transition from its residential appearance to a more stable, "commercial" building that would continue to respect the scale of the neighborhood.

Prior to the renovations, the dignity of the original structure had been covered up by vinyl siding and worn away by decay. The owner/architects wanted to restore the structure - not necessarily to its historical correctness, but to restore it to the state of dignity that it once enjoyed among its neighbors.