Crow Girard House

This structure was built by Crow Girard, a member of one of early Lafayette’s influential families. In the late 1880s, Crow Girard and his mother, Maxime Crow Girard, donated the first twenty-five acres that became the original college campus for today’s UL Lafayette. The Girard family also donated the property for Girard Park in 1934. The property on which the Elmhurst Park neighborhood now exists, once belonged to attorney Basil Catryl Crow (1800-1872) and his wife, Maximilian Brashear ( -1888), who were Crow Girard’s maternal grandparents. Their daughter, Maxime A. Crow, married Michel Eloi Girard, Jr., who was the son of Michael Eloi Girard, Sr. of Sauverai, France and Anastasie Mouton of Saint James, Louisiana. Mr. and Mrs. Basil Crow bequeathed the land that now comprises Lafayette subdivisions, 1901 Girard Addition and 1905 Elmhurst Park Addition, to their daughter and son-in-law shortly after their marriage. The young couple built their home at the southeast corner of West University Avenue and Cherry Street, one block northwest of this house. Crow Girard, like his father, Michael Eloi Girard, Jr., received his law degree from Tulane University. In 1900, when he built this house, he was nearly 40 years old and had achieved notable financial success in Lafayette. Crow Girard and his wife, Roberta Kennedy Girard, were widely respected in Lafayette for their volunteer activities among social, civic, educational and religious circles.