SHREVEPORT, La. – When John Bernard Slattery arrived in Shreveport in 1844, he was a 30-year-old Catholic lawyer with modest beginnings and ambitious dreams. Over the decades, those dreams would help shape the city’s identity — most notably through a towering landmark that still bears his name.
Slattery, the son of Irish immigrants, built his fortune not in law but in real estate, acquiring land across Northwest Louisiana during a period of rapid growth. Historians describe him as an innovator and a speculator — a businessman willing to take risks on a city he believed in.
“John Bernard Slattery was an innovator in an age of innovators,” said Gary Joiner, a history professor at LSUS. “He was a speculator, a businessman.”…