The Houmas | |
Location | West of Burnside, about 0.63 miles (1.01 km) west of intersection of River Road and Louisiana Highway 44 |
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Nearest city | Burnside, Louisiana |
Coordinates | 30°08′28″N90°56′03″W / 30.14115°N 90.93421°W |
Area | 10 acres (4.0 ha) |
Built | 1840 |
Built by | John Smith Preston |
Architectural style | Federal, Greek Revival |
NRHP reference No. | 80001694 [1] |
Added to NRHP | September 27, 1980 |
The Houmas, also known as Burnside Plantation and currently known as Houmas House Plantation and Gardens, is a historic plantation complex and house museum in Burnside, Louisiana. The plantation was established in the late 1700s, with the current main house completed in 1840. It was named after the native Houma people, who originally occupied this area of Louisiana. [2] [3]
The complex, containing eight buildings and one structure, and the 10 acres (4.0 ha) they rest upon, was added to the National Register of Historic Places on September 27, 1980. [1] [2]
The Houmas plantation had its beginnings when Alexander Latil and Maurice Conway appropriated all of the Houma tribe's land on the east side of the Mississippi River in 1774. Alexander Latil built a French Colonial style plantation house at the site around 1775.
It was a working sugarcane plantation by 1803, when the United States obtained the area through the Louisiana Purchase. Shortly afterwards The Houmas was purchased by Daniel Clark, who began to develop the property and built one of the first sugar mills along this stretch of the river. In June 1807, Clark and territorial Governor William C. C. Claiborne fought a duel on the property, in which Claiborne sustained a gunshot wound to his leg.
In 1811, former American Revolutionary War general Wade Hampton purchased Daniel Clark's land holdings and slaves. Hampton was one of the wealthiest landowners and largest slaveholders in the antebellum era South. [2] [4] [5] [3]
The earliest surviving building is the original main house. Its construction date is the source of contention among scholarly sources, with some believing it is the original Latil house, with later alterations. Others point to evidence that it is from the Wade Hampton era. It is a Federal style two-story, brick building with end wall gables and chimneys and a stuccoed exterior. It has two rooms on each floor with a central hall and staircase and is linked to the later main house by a carriageway. [2] [4] [5]
Management of the property was taken over by John Smith Preston about 1825. Preston was married to Caroline Hampton, Wade Hampton's daughter. The Prestons built a new main house in front of the old one in 1840. The Greek Revival mansion is two-and-a-half stories high and surrounded by 14 monumental Doric columns on three sides. The hipped roof is crowned with arched dormer windows and a belvedere. Additional structures from this period include matching brick octagonal garçonnières, or bachelors' quarters. They are two-stories, with a sitting room on the first floor and a bedroom on the second. There are also numerous other brick service structures adjacent to the house. [2] [4] [5] [3]
The more than 10,000-acre (4,000 ha) estate was sold to John Burnside, a native of Belfast, Ireland, in 1857. Burnside had increased the acreage to 12,000 acres (4,900 ha) within the span of a few years and built four sugar mills to process his crop. [4] [5] With approx 750 slaves on it and Burnside's many surrounding plantations, it was the center of the largest slave holding in Louisiana prior to the American Civil War. [6] [3]
During the war, plans were made to use the plantation house as a headquarters for Union general Benjamin Franklin Butler, who governed New Orleans for about seven months following the city's capture in May 1862. Burnside, still a citizen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, reputedly prevented this by suggesting that international complications would arise if his estate was seized by Federal authorities. [3]
A lifelong bachelor, John Burnside died in 1881 and left the estate to a friend, Oliver Beirne. It then went to William Porcher Miles, Beirne's son-in-law. Following the death of Miles in 1899, the property began to be divided up and the house began to fall into disrepair. The Mississippi River flood in 1927 and the Great Depression further endangered the property. [2] [4] [5]
The house and what was left of the property was finally purchased by Dr. George B. Crozat in 1940. Crozat began an ambitious program of restoration of the house and gardens. In the process he stripped off some of the original decorative elements of the interior and exterior to give the house a simpler, "Federal style," look. [2] [4] The house and grounds remained in that family until it passed to a new owner, Kevin Kelly, in 2003. [7] [3]
The Houmas has been the filming location for a variety of motion pictures, television series and commercials. Houmas House is most associated with the Bette Davis movie Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964), in which the house has a Tara-like presence.
Other films shot in part at The Houmas include Mandingo (1975), Fletch Lives (1988), and Love, Wedding, Marriage (2011). Television films and series include Moon of the Wolf (1972), A Woman Called Moses (1976), Big Bob Johnson and His Fantastic Speed Circus (1978), All My Children (1981), A Taste of Louisiana with Chef John Folse and Company (one episode, 1990), Snow Wonder (2006), K-Ville (2007), Top Chef (one episode, 2009), Midnight Bayou (2009), Revenge of the Bridesmaids (2010), Wheel of Fortune (one episode, 2011), and The Bachelor (one episode, 2017). [8] [9] Commercials have been shot at the plantation for Budweiser, Virginia Slims, Best Buy, Hibernia National Bank, and the Louisiana Office of Tourism. [9]
Houmas was the inspiration for The Antebellum, an 8,212 sqft estate and gardens in Grogan's Point. It is one of six historically inspired estates developed by the Westbrook Building Company in 1988. [10] In-kind, The Antebellum inspired three additional plantation estates in East Shore of The Woodlands.
The Garden District is a neighborhood of the city of New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. A subdistrict of the Central City/Garden District Area, its boundaries as defined by the New Orleans City Planning Commission are: St. Charles Avenue to the north, 1st Street to the east, Magazine Street to the south, and Toledano Street to the west. The National Historic Landmark district extends a little farther.
Oak Alley Plantation is a historic plantation located on the west bank of the Mississippi River, in the community of Vacherie, St. James Parish, Louisiana, U.S. Oak Alley is named for its distinguishing visual feature, an alley or canopied path, created by a double row of southern live oak trees about 800 feet long, planted in the early 18th century — long before the present house was built. The allée or tree avenue runs between the home and the River. The property was designated a National Historic Landmark for its architecture and landscaping, and for the agricultural innovation of grafting pecan trees, performed there in 1846–47 by a gardener.
Jean-Noël Destréhan de Tours was a Creole politician in Louisiana and one-time owner of St. Charles Parish's Destrehan Plantation, one of Louisiana's historic antebellum landmarks. The community of Destrehan was named for his family.
Destrehan Plantation is an antebellum mansion, in the French Colonial style, modified with Greek Revival architectural elements. It is located in southeast Louisiana, near the town of the same name, Destrehan.
Wade Hampton was an American soldier and politician. A two-term U.S. congressman, he may have been the wealthiest planter, and one of the largest slave holders in the United States, at the time of his death.
Andrew Beirne was an Irish immigrant who became a merchant, militia officer and politician in western Virginia, representing Monroe County in both houses of the Virginia General Assembly as well as the United States House of Representatives and the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1829-1830.
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Belmont Mansion, also known as Acklen Hall, and originally known as Belle Monte, Belle Mont or Belmont, is a historic mansion located in Nashville, Tennessee. It was built by Joseph and Adelicia Acklen to serve as the center of their 180-acre summer estate in what was then country outside the city, and featured elaborate gardens and a zoo. They lived much of the rest of the year on her plantations in Louisiana.
Nottoway Plantation, also known as Nottoway Plantation House is located near White Castle, Louisiana, United States. The plantation house is a Greek Revival- and Italianate-styled mansion built by slaves and artisans for John Hampden Randolph in 1859, and is the largest extant antebellum plantation house in the South with 53,000 square feet (4,900 m2) of floor space.
The Hampton–Preston House located at 1615 Blanding Street in Columbia, South Carolina, is a historic mansion that was the home of members of the prominent Hampton family. It was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on July 29, 1969.
John Smith Preston was a wealthy planter, soldier, and attorney who became prominent in South Carolina politics in the 19th century. An ardent secessionist, he was the state's delegate dispatched to help convince the Virginia Secession Convention to join South Carolina in seceding from the antebellum Union in the months prior to the start of the American Civil War.
Burnside is an unincorporated community in Ascension Parish, Louisiana, United States. It was founded by French and German settlers in 1726, early in the French colonial period. The ZIP Code for Burnside is 70738.
The 1811 German Coast uprising was a revolt of slaves in parts of the Territory of Orleans on January 8–10, 1811. The uprising occurred on the east bank of the Mississippi River in what is now St. John the Baptist, St. Charles and Jefferson Parishes, Louisiana. The slave insurgency was the largest in U.S. history, but the rebels killed only two White men. Confrontations with militia, combined with post-trial executions, resulted in the deaths of 95 slaves.
Ashland Plantation, also known as the Belle Helene or Ashland-Belle Helene Plantation, is a historic building, built in 1841, that was a plantation estate and home of Duncan Farrar Kenner. Located in Darrow, Louisiana, in Ascension Parish. The manor house is an example of antebellum Greek Revival architecture.
Antebellum architecture is the neoclassical architectural style characteristic of the 19th-century Southern United States, especially the Deep South, from after the birth of the United States with the American Revolution, to the start of the American Civil War. Antebellum architecture is especially characterized by Georgian, Neo-classical, and Greek Revival style homes and mansions. These plantation houses were built in the southern American states during roughly the thirty years before the American Civil War; approximately between the 1830s to 1860s.
Plantation complexes were common on agricultural plantations in the Southern United States from the 17th into the 20th century. The complex included everything from the main residence down to the pens for livestock. Until the abolition of slavery, such plantations were generally self-sufficient settlements that relied on the forced labor of enslaved people.
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Oliver Beirne was a landowner from western Virginia, one of the owner of the Old Sweet Springs resort, and sole heir to plantation millionaire John Burnside, of whom he was a longtime friend.
The Orange Grove Plantation House is a historic house on a former plantation in Terrebonne Parish, about eight miles away from Houma, Louisiana. It was built in 1850 for John C. Beatty, a sugar planter who owned slaves. The plantation spanned 2,470 acres of land when it was sold at auction shortly after Beatty's death in 1857. Beatty's slaves were sold with the property.
Robert Ruffin Barrow was one of the largest landowners and slave owner in the south before the American Civil War. He owned sixteen plantations, mostly in Louisiana, and had large landholdings in Texas. He also invested money in projects in which he saw potential. The most well known investment he made was in the early submarine projects of his brother-in-law, Horace Hunley, for the Confederate States Navy.