Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 10, 1991 TAG: 9103100312
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: D-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: George & Rosalie Leposky
DATELINE: BATON ROUGE, LA. LENGTH: Long
From this lofty vantage point, we watched the sun rise across the Mississippi River through a swirl of mist. In the channel, a freighter's ghostly form chugged laboriously upriver. Below us, the grand dwelling where we had slept nestled in a sedate bouquet of live oak and magnolia trees, a cool green oasis in a warm green carpet of sugar cane fields that swept away from the river toward a distant horizon.
This was Nottoway plantation, a 64-room confection of Greek Revival and Italianate styles completed in 1859. It's believed to be the South's largest remaining plantation home. On its facade, 22 slender columns support a massive cornice above a recessed two-story gallery with ornate iron-filigree handrails. A semicircular White Ballroom extends along most of one side of the house.
Nottoway looks like a multitiered wedding cake, a not-so-subtle hint to young men in the neighborhood that its owner, John Hampden Randolph, had eight girls among his 11 children. One died young, but the others attracted suitable suitors and were married in the White Ballroom.
After Randolph's death, his wife sold the home at auction in 1889 and the family left. Years later, daughter Cornelia wrote a lascivious novel, "The White Castle of Louisiana," a thinly disguised account of Nottoway's heyday published in 1903 under the pseudonym M.R. Ailenroc.
Nottoway's present owner, Australian industrialist Paul Ramsey, opens the house daily for guided tours and operates a bed-and-breakfast establishment for overnight guest in 13 of the rooms. We stayed in Cornelia's bedroom, snuggled in her massive canopy set between tall windows with a river view.
Cornelia's room is no place for sleeping late; we were politely warned that the room must be ready when guided tours begin at 9 a.m. Having left a 7 a.m. wakeup call, we scurried back from our dawn levee stroll to meet the tray of warm sweet potato cinnamon muffins, orange juice and coffee delivered to our door.
Nottoway is a crown jewel of the plantation society that thrived in the 18th and 19th centuries along the Missippi River from New Orleans upriver to the East and West Feliciana Parishes north of Baton Rouge, a distance of about 125 miles.
Today petrochemical plants line much of the river bank, but two-thirds of the historic homes survive. About 20 on or near the River Road along the Mississippi are open for public tours, and close to a dozen offer bed-and-breakfast accommodations - some in the historic structures themselves, others in cottages on the grounds.
We spent another night at Oak Alley Plantation, which has six comfortable rooms in three cottages a short stroll from the elegant Greek Revival mansion. Built in 1837-39 by Jacques T. Roman, brother of two-term Louisiana Gov. Andre Roman, the mansion has 28 simple Doric columns - a reflection of the 28 evenly spaced live oak trees an unknown settler had planted centuries before. When the house was built, they already formed a majestic leafy canopy from the front portico to the River Road.
The last resident owners of Oak Alley, retired cotton broker Andrew Stewart and his wife, Josephine, bought the property in 1925 and restored the home, which a foundation now maintains. After Stewart died in 1946, his wife lived on at Oak Alley for another 26 years. "She was 93 when she died at 7:30 a.m. on Oct. 3, 1972," says house manager Sandra Schexnayder. "At that time, all the clocks in the house stopped."
Other unexplained happenings have occurred in the house, Schexnayder says. "Within the past three years, one of the plantation employees saw a black vision sitting on the bed in which Josephine Stewart died. Other visitors over the years have seen a lady in black up on the widow's walk, which is locked. Construction workers in the house have sensed a presence and looked up, but found no one there."
Within a few miles of Oak Alley and Nottoway, we toured two other intriguing plantation homes:
Houmas House, a 16-room Greek Revival mansion built in 1840 by the Preston family of South Carolina. With 20,000 acres and a thousand slaves, Houmas House once presided over the largest sugar plantation in the United States. Unlike most Louisiana planters, the Prestons preserved the less pretentious 18th-century colonial home already on the site, building their new home beside it with a covered carriageway connecting the two. In 1940, Dr. George B. Crozat, a New Orleans dentist and orthodontics pioneer, restored Houmas house and filled it with an impressive array of antiques. Crozat's heirs still own it.
San Francisco, built in 1853-56 by planter Edmond B. Marmillion in the French Creole style, with the dining room on the lower level near the kitchen and slave quarters. The ornate exterior seems to vibrate with elaborate gingerbread trim - scrolls, fluted pillars, Corinthian columns and rococo grillework - in a form resembling a Mississippi River paddlewheel steamer. Author Frances Parkinson Keyes described the style as "Steamboat Gothic" and set one of her novels there. The interior is notable for its painted ceilings and original rosewood furnishings by John Henry Belter, a noted New York cabinetmaker. Marathon Oil Co., which built a refinery on San Francisco's plantation lands, sponsors a foundation that spent $2 million to restore the house in 1975-77.
In the Felicianas, we stayed in Milbank in Jackson, La., a four-room bed-and-breakfast in an antique-filled historic inn. Built in 1825-36 as a banking house for the Clinton/ Port Hudson Railroad, this imposing structure has also been a newspaper office, dance hall, Civil War troops barracks, and a dozen other things. The current owner, Leroy Harvey of Jackson, opens Milbank for public tours on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Our bed there was commissioned by Thomas Jefferson for his daughter Martha, whose wedding-day likeness watched over us from an oil painting on the wall.
The Felicianas plantations sit back from the river in wooded hills. We visited two:
Oakley Plantation, where naturalist-painter John James Audubon worked for four months in 1821 as a tutor to Eliza Perrie, daughter of the estate's owner. During this time Audubon also roamed the Feliciana woods, studying and painting birds. The plantation house, in the 100-acre Audubon State Commemorative Area, was begun in 1799 and finished in 1806. It's a two-story wood-frame house with jalousied galleries atop a raised brick basement, with sparse Federal-style furnishings reflecting the period when Audubon lived there. Thirty-two of his prints are displayed throughout the house. A collection of Victorian-era toys found in the attic when the state bought Oakely in 1947 probaly belonged to Eliza's own children.
Rosedown Plantation, built in 1835 by Daniel Turnbull, a wealthy planter. His daughter, Sarah, married James Pirrie Bowman, son of Eliza Pirrie of Oakley. Located near St. Francisville, Rosedown is a 16-room Greek Revival mansion with Georgian proportions and detail, surrounded by 28 acres of formal gardens. In 1956, Milton and Catherine Fondren Underwood of Houston bought and restored the estate.
If you go
THE ROAD MAP: Order "Tourist Map of Louisiana's Cajun Bayou Lands and Mississippi River Plantations," P.O. Box 1850, Thibodaux La. 70302, phone 504-446-9296, $1.95, or "Plantation Homes along the River Road, From Baton Rouge to New Orleans," by David King Gleason, 1766 Nicholson Drive, Baton Rouge La. 70802, phone 504-383-8989, $3.50.
THE GUIDE BOOK: "The Pelican Guide to Plantation Homes of Louisiana" features 19 self-drive plantation tours covering more than 250 historic structures, with detailed directions to to hard-to-find homes. Try Roanoke bookstores or contact Pelican Publishing Co., 1101 Monroe St., Gretna La. 70053, phone 800-843-1724. The book is $7.95 plus $1.50 postage.
FOR INFORMATION on the Louisiana plantation country, contact the Baton Rouge Area Convention & Visitors Bureau, PO Drawer 4149, Baton Rouge La. 70821, phone 1-800-527-6843 or 504-383-1825. For bed-and-breakfast reservations at Nottoway, contact Nottoway Plantation Restaurant and Inn, PO Box 160, White Castle, La. 70788, phone 504-545-2730 or 504-545-2409.
Reservations at most of the other Louisiana plantations are available through Southern Comfort Bed & Breakfast Reservations, 2856 Hundred Oaks, Baton Rouge La. 70808, phone 800-749-1928 or 504-346-1928.
by CNB