A patch of downtown Baton Rouge that has served as a public gathering place since 1809 is getting a fresh start, with a grassroots group of residents, artists and volunteers transforming the historic intersection of Main and North Fourth Streets through landscaping, cleanup and new public art. The Downtown Development District will host a public unveiling ceremony at Gras-Devall Plaza on November 20 at 10:30 a.m., celebrating months of work on a site with roots dating back more than 200 years.
According to WBRZ, the plaza sits near St. Joseph Cathedral and originally served as a marketplace and gathering place, with designated spaces once set aside for horses and wagons. Antonio Gras, along with Edith and Richard Devall, dedicated the four corners of the intersection for public use, giving the plaza its name. The site's revival traces back to Elizabeth Dent-Sumrall, a descendant of one of the families associated with the plaza's founding, who approached Enrique Piñerua, co-owner of downtown restaurant Cocha, about improving the historic site while he was already working on landscaping improvements near his restaurant.
From a Private Fix-Up to a Neighborhood Project
What started as conversation about sprucing up the area around Cocha grew into a broader community effort. Community volunteers contributed their time, equipment and talents to the project, and Louisiana Nursery supported the work as well, per the same WBRZ report. The celebration set for November 20 will include the unveiling of a new mural by artist Kristen Serio, and volunteers are expected to give remarks about their work transforming the intersection. The ceremony is open to the public.
Among those involved is Jennifer Richardson, founder of Keep Tiger Town Beautiful, a volunteer cleanup group she started in 2021 after noticing litter along Essen Lane, according to WBRZ. Richardson has since become a familiar name in Baton Rouge cleanup circles, and accounts of her group's very first outing vary slightly: she told 225batonrouge.com that volunteers collected 43 contractor bags of trash in about three hours, while she told nola.com that the same cleanup, with about 15 volunteers, yielded 42 bags in roughly the same timeframe.
A Growing Track Record of Cleanups
Whatever the exact count from that first outing, Keep Tiger Town Beautiful's footprint has grown substantially since. By early October, the group had picked up 5,000 contractor bags of trash, the same 225batonrouge.com report noted, while nola.com separately reported the group's volunteers had collected almost 27,000 42-gallon contractor bags of trash. A WBRZ report put the figure even higher, saying the nonprofit had cleaned up enough trash in the capital region to fill 37,000 garbage bags and had placed 157 roadside trash cans.
The group's work hasn't gone unrecognized. Keep Tiger Town Beautiful was selected to receive the 2022 Let Louisiana Shine Award from Keep Louisiana Beautiful, nola.com reported at the time. That honor came amid a broader statewide push on litter: in January 2022, then-Gov. John Bel Edwards announced the creation of a task force on Statewide Litter Abatement and Beautification, according to WRKF. That same report described Keep Tiger Town Beautiful volunteers gathering to clean up trash near the I-10 College Drive exit in Baton Rouge as part of that broader effort.
What to Expect at the Unveiling
The November 20 ceremony marks the culmination of the latest chapter in that volunteer tradition, this time focused on preserving a piece of downtown Baton Rouge history rather than simply clearing litter from it. Organizers say the gathering will highlight both the new mural and the people who put in the work to transform the intersection. For a city with a growing roster of grassroots beautification efforts, Gras-Devall Plaza's revival offers another example of residents stepping in to shape public space themselves.
