Landry’s Paladium

Status: Closed

Parish: Lafayette

Location: Lafayette

Photos: (L) Johnnie Allan Collection, Center for  Louisiana Studies, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, (3 at R) Courtesy City of Lafayette Clerk of Court Office

Marsha Landry Pressburg: “Landry’s belonged to my grandfather Alpha Stephen Landry. It was located where Big W’s Auto Sales is and not the window factory. I remember the really rough times when all the fights occurred. I was very young. My Dad and Grandfather were behind the bar and my Mom stapled tickets to people who entered the dancing area. My Grandmother walked around and visited with everyone. You could go to the bar without entering the dancing area. I had to go every Saturday night until I was old enough to drive. Everyone I speak to has fond memories of the place. Mine are just about being forced to go somewhere that I did not want to be.”

Don Gassie: “I went to Landry’s a lot, often to hear Cookie and the Cupcakes. The bar was surrounded by a cage and a bouncer would ask you “Quel age a tu?” because you had to be 18 to drink. I never heard anything but french from the bouncers. There was seating for parents and non-dancers on the right of the bar as you walked in. The stage was all the way to the back and to its left, protected by a screen, was an airplane propeller powered by an electric motor. It put out quite a breeze onto the dance floor. I remember cigarettes whizzing by after the wind knocked them out of a smoker’s hand. One night after a fight the bouncers had put one of the kids in a room and went after another. The kid in the room got out and ran out the front door and across Highway 90 to the parking lot on the other side. One of the bouncers, a gray haired older man, saw that his captive had disappeared and he ran out the front door, crossed the highway, leaped a ditch and reached the car just as it started to drive away. The bouncer (probably a special deputy) had his gun out and into the window of the car as it’s wheels spun on the gravel. He took the kid back into Landry’s, shoving the troublemaker roughly on the way back.”

Mercedes Hollier- CFMA- “Lots of touring country bands there- it was in the curve to the left on Cameron- near where the window factory is now. There would always be standing & visiting outside – our older brothers were our chaperones.”

Dudley Duhon: “I played there a time or two. A country band would play in the afternoon, then French music would come on later.”

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Photo Credit: Photographs from the Johnnie Allan Collection at the Center for Louisiana Studies, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Photograph courtesy of Lafayette Parish Clerk of Court, Louis J. Perret