Between the historic cities of New Orleans and Baton Rouge, visitors can tour many of Louisiana’s most fabled antebellum plantations that line the Great Mississippi River Road and parallel the Mississippi River. These famous plantation manors were built by immensely wealthy sugar planters whose wealth came from “White Gold,” or sugarcane, 30 years prior to the Civil War.
The Lonely Planet Travel notes that touring these mansions is the “Best History Tour in the US,” here in New Orleans Plantation Country.
The mansions that lined River Road were a combination of French, Spanish, German, and African architecture; their homes often started as modest abodes, but as the planters’ wealth grew, their houses were enlarged or replaced with new, more impressive homes. Simple Creole houses, with the additions of massive Greek Revival columns, curved stairs, semi-detached wings, reflected the owner’s wealth. A limited number of Creole houses, including Laura Plantation, survived.
In those days, cane was put on barges and shipped to New Orleans. Today, if you take the Steamboat Natchez tour, you can view Dominos Sugar, the second-largest sugar refinery in the world, from the river and can watch raw sugar being loaded from barges by a huge scooper that dumps it into hoppers to process the sugar.
OAK ALLEY
Known as the “Grand Dame of River Road,” Oak Alley’s most distinguishing architectural highlight is a free-standing colonnade of 28 enormous columns. Of all the plantation houses once scattered along the Mississippi, Oak Alley is probably the finest of those remaining. Standing here, it is easy to imagine Rhett Butler sweeping up Scarlett O’Hara in Hollywood’s epic movie — Gone With The Wind.
As was true for so many Southern families during the the Civil War, the war was not kind to the original owners here. The children were forced to sell Oak Alley at auction to pay off their mother’s debts, as she had been unable to maintain the plantation after her husband died. (But don’t feel too sorry for them — they opened and still own the famous Café du Monde in New Orleans, renowned for beignets and chicory coffee).
Restored now to its 19th century splendor, it’s hard to imagine that 100 years ago a company bought Oak Alley property to raise cattle and abandoned the mansion for a decade. Panicked cows broke into the estate during a particularly bad storm, and for five years the cows sheltered within these grand halls.
Fortunately for us, Andrew and Josephine Stewart fell in love with the ruined mansion when they drove by it in 1925. Buying it on the spot, they immediately set about renovating and restoring this enormous fixer-upper: three-quarters of the roof had collapsed, the house was overgrown with weeds and, thanks to the cows, the interior of the manor was in shambles.
But Oak Alley is equally famous for its double row of 28, 300-year-old giant Oak trees that line the ¼ mile long driveway, leading from the road to the mansion.
Fortunately for us, before Mrs. Stewart died in 1972 she created The Oak Alley Foundation, a non-profit organization to preserve the plantation, launching a trend to save the old plantation homes in the area.
Oak Alley offers daily tours, and while there be sure to check out the up-scale gift shop, ice cream parlor and cafe which serves breakfast and lunch to guests and visitors. You can stay overnight in one of the property’s guest cottages.
LAURA PLANTATION
Tours here focus on The Memoirs of Laura, based on 5,000 pages of documents from the French National Archives about the free and enslaved families who lived here. Laura gives a detailed account of 200 years of life on this farm, when Louisiana’s Creole world was a rich mix of three different cultures: European, West African and Native American.
Laura was owned and run by women — unheard of in those days. Built in 1805, slaves were brought from here from Senegal and Gambia to work in the sugarcane fields. This helps explain Laura’s architecture, which is a mixture of French and West African. The slaves knew, with knowledge brought from their own countries, how to construct and built a home that could deal with the heat and humidity, centuries before electricity and air-conditioning.
The doors and windows in the plantation date back to 1790. Local Cypress wood used in the doors and floors here are not only strong and dense, but — most importantly — resistant to termites.
Vanity and fashion were just as prominent in the 18th century as now; then people used lead, wax and caulk for makeup. This resulted in a high incidence of lead-poisoning, as the lead-based make-up caused their eyes to swell and become inflamed, attacked the enamel on their teeth and changed the texture of their skin causing it to blacken, and even caused baldness. Unknown back then was that heavy use of lead make-up could cause death.
DESTREHAN PLANTATION
One of the oldest plantations in Louisiana, Destrehan was built Creole-style in 1790, during Spanish rule of the state. During the 19th century Destrehan produced, as did so many of the other plantations, blue indigo and then sugarcane.
In 1910, the family sold the plantation to the American Oil Company (Amoco), and in 1958 it was abandoned and repeatedly vandalized. Destrehan is a unique example of a plantation that outlived the oil refinery that was once built around it. In 1971, Amoco donated the house and four acres of land to the River Road Historical Society, and helped rebuild its roof, install a fire sprinkler system and gifted it another 12 acres.
A favorite item on the tour is the easy-to-miss “courting candles”, used when a daughter’s suitor came calling. These adjustable candles were used by a father as a timer, as it enabled him to set a time limit in the room where the couple conversed. When the candles burnt to the metal at the top of the candle holder, it was time for the suitor to go home.
SAN FRANCISCO PLANTATION
Known as “The Most Opulent Plantation House in North America,” the ornate, vividly-colored San Francisco Plantation manor is furnished and decorated like no other plantation in the South. The home features five hand-painted ceilings, faux marble and bois wood graining throughout, and has one of the finest antique collections in the country.
Built in 1854, the colorful manor is so distinctive that some call its architecture “Steamboat Gothic.” As with other manors here, it was almost demolished and then restored; this time with financial assistance from the Marathon Oil Company.
A fun tour note — the French of Louisiana were staunchly anti-British, and there is a hilarious display of their resentment to the British in one of the main bedrooms, which has a portable toilet in it. The British royal crest painted in the center of the porcelain bowl, which is right, ahem, where you aim when in use.
Another favorite tour item is the “fainting couch,” a necessity in those days as the act of corseting up a woman would push blood to flow to her abdomen, causing her to faint.
The ‘tête-à-tête’ chair, or ‘head-to-head’ chair was used as a ‘courting chair,’ it is as quaint as it is amusing. It consists of two parallel seats, facing in opposite directions, with a shared arm of the bench separating them.
The “Gentlemen’s Parlor” is painted with exquisite detail throughout the room. The tour guide, dressed in 1800s garb, makes our tour group laugh when she refers to the parlor as the “man cave” of 1859.
All of these plantations offer a unique blend of history and romance, making them a uniquely special destination to any traveler in the US.
Lavish plantations lining the Mississippi
Lavish plantations lining the Mississippi
