Yandle House

The Yandle house was moved in 1911, from downtown at 419 Jefferson Street to Elmhurst Park neighborhood. Mr. Sylvester R. Yandle arrived from Kansas City, Missouri in 1898. He worked for a company that sold horses and mules to the many rice farmers migrating at that time from the Midwest and Northwest to Southwest Louisiana. Yandle arrived with the animals on railroad cars, and after selling them, he decided to stay in Lafayette. He wrote home, sending for his childhood sweetheart, Rosemarie Mattie Metscher, to join him in Lafayette. To make a living, the newly-married couple made and sold cakes and candies out of a tent on Jefferson Street. When their business increased, they moved into a proper building and lived in a house at the rear of their shop. The business expanded to become a popular confectionery and ice cream parlor, and in 1911, the Yandles moved this Jefferson Street residence to its present location in Elmhurst Park. The Yandle House includes stained glass windows on the second story that were salvaged from the wooden Saint John the
Evangelist Catholic Church that was demolished the same year the house was moved. The family lived in Elmhurst Park for approximately 40 years.