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The Mansion was stunning and filled with so much history. The rooms provided a variety of artifacts across many decades and many styles. Each room was amazing to explore and our guide knew so much about everything.
Restaurants at Houmas House
Life on the Mississippi: New museum on Houmas House grounds in Ascension to give look into the past - The Advocate
Life on the Mississippi: New museum on Houmas House grounds in Ascension to give look into the past.
Posted: Sat, 26 May 2018 07:00:00 GMT [source]
The Houmas House Plantation is beautiful, but so are the haunting remains of a sugar plantation in Florida that was burned by the Seminoles in the 1830s. I loved seeing the vegetable gardens as much as the floral ones. There’s a vegetable garden located right behind and to the side of Houmas House…let’s take a closer look. I promise I hadn’t had one too many Mint Juleps in the Houmas House Restaurant prior to taking these pictures. I thought perhaps they leaned due to past hurricanes or the winds from the river but the story behind the leaning Gentlemen is much more mysterious than that.
History
As I mentioned last week, the well-known movie, Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte, had many scenes filmed at the house. I had never seen the movie, so we watched it that night when we got back to my sister’s house. It was scary and we all enjoyed it and seeing the exterior of the plantation in the movie. We also watched Whatever Happened to Baby Jane and Strait Jacket while we were visiting and they were all good. You can see all the movies & TV shows filmed here which is really interesting. John Burnside was born in Tyrone County, Ireland around 1810 of a poor family.
Other Haunted Plantations in Louisiana
The crewman’s natural reaction was to express concern that a little girl was in a construction zone because it was not safe for children. The charm of the house, the land and the stately old oak trees is eternal and so are the memories you will make there. Once a sprawling plantation of more than 300,000 acres, Houmas House is a magnificent historical landmark that has survived wars, floods, abandonment — and the test of time.
Houmas House Plantation Grounds
LSU professor: It's Louisiana's time to ditch 'happy slaves' myths, confront horrors, help to heal - The Advocate
LSU professor: It's Louisiana's time to ditch 'happy slaves' myths, confront horrors, help to heal.
Posted: Sun, 31 Mar 2019 07:00:00 GMT [source]
These roofline additions were a way to admit light and air into the structure below. Cupolas were integrated into the roof construction, meaning someone in the building could look up and into the cupola. Although typically enclosed, helping keep creatures, debris, and weather elements out of the structure, cupolas often have openings, such as louvers or operable windows, for air to circulate. Because of these features, cupolas promote air circulation and prevent moisture buildup, which is why you’ll see them on many barns, stables, and garages. With its expansive gardens, stately mansion, restaurants and cottage, the Houmas House plantation also makes a wonderful wedding venue and is available for corporate events. The house is stately and majestic inside and out, with period antiques, artwork and artifacts helping tell the story of plantation life.
If you don’t feel like walking, you can do a small group haunted history carriage tour and let the horse do all of the work. This haunted Louisiana plantation house features a 125-foot long veranda, which is well known for its ornamental ironwork. It also has a stained glass entrance that was hand-painted, etched and patterned after the French cross to ward off evil. After doing research into the history of the house, the Houmas House staff thinks they may know the girl’s identity — though it remains somewhat of a mystery. Some say that all of that activity is what led one of the workers to see a young girl descending the beautiful freestanding stairway in the house.
So I’m not glorifying slavery at all, but rather looking thoughtfully at a beautiful home and garden plantation house that does have a rich history, with slavery a big part of that history. The website does mention 550 slaves at Houmas House during slavery days and before the Civil War. Cupolas were especially popular as part of the Picturesque Movement, which had a big impact on residential architecture when these styles were developing. It was a period of design focused on developing a home’s architecture to better appreciate its surrounding landscape.
Unfortunately 16 of the workers devised a scheme to profit from the large trees by floating the logs downriver to New Orleans. Not only did these men fail to make it to the city and collect any money, something happened to all of them and none of their bodies were ever recovered. But as the levee construction crews continued their work, tree after tree crashed to the ground beneath the saw blades of the workers. In the name of progress, the “Gentlemen” were downed, the levee was raised, and the road was widened and paved.
The next morning we started our our day with breakfast at the Dixie Cafe. As the sun started to set we returned to our cozy cottage for some much needed rest. She did a wonderful job sharing all the history and answering all the questions we had. We enjoyed our meal, the staff and the ambiance of the restaurant.
Sitting on a curve of the Mississippi River, the Houmas House and Gardens dates back 240 years. This iconic sugar cane plantation has seen a lot of history over the years, so join me on this tour of this stunning Classical Revival house that is still there on the grounds. The plantation is left with 38 acres, down from the hundreds of acres that it started with. The Sugar Cane barons of the 18th century lived along the river and there were hundreds of plantations.
Kind of unusual given that the owner actually lives on the property.Our tour was at 7 pm on a Friday night (The house closes at 8 pm.), and we saw numerous couples dressed very nicely. We thought there was a wedding party on site, but it turns out that the "fine dining" restaurant was open. Cannot comment on the food, but it is apparently pretty popular. The last time I visited a plantation in Louisiana was Oak Alley in 2015 with my sister. Slavery was a horrific and tragic part of Southern history and the plantations that dot the Mississippi River in Louisiana were some of the biggest offenders.
But a cupola that is accessible so that a person can look out of it—and possibly even fit entirely inside of it—is called a belvedere. Styles that developed with strong influence from the Picturesque Movement, like Italianate houses, often incorporated belvederes as a lookout. For example, the belvedere on the Houmas House in Darrow, Louisiana, offered a high vantage point to view and appreciate surrounding lands. On a great curve of the Mississippi River and on high ground first selected by the Houmas Indians stand the great Tuscan columns of The Houmas. The mighty Mississippi River gave birth to this land over the millennium, creating the fertile lands which became the great fields of Sugar Cane, Cotton, Corn, Indigo, tobacco and more. In 1803 Donaldson and Scott built a new center hall cottage directly in front of the1700’s French House.
At the age of twelve or thirteen, he somehow managed to obtain passage to America, with only a few pennies in his pocket. He began his young career in the grocery house of Talbot Jones in Baltimore. He quickly excelled, became a junior partner, and moved to Roanoke. John Burnside and Oliver Beirne, Andrew Beirne’s son, were the same age and matured together in Mr. Beirne’s business, becoming very close friends, a friendship that lasted through the years. John Burnside arrives in New Orleans with Oliver Beirne in 1837 to open a dry goods store named Beirne and Burnside. After the death of Andrew Beirne in 1845, Oliver returned to Virginia to manage the family interests and the business Beirne and Burnside became J.
Houmas House has an Inn on the grounds, as well as 3 restaurants you can choose from. I read that events and weddings are held here and I can see why. In 1882, Oliver enlisted his son-in-law, William Porcher Miles (widower of Elizabeth Beirne, Oliver’s daughter) to manage his Louisiana Estates. In 1888, at the age 77, he died in New Orleans, leaving as estate valued at over five million dollars. The Houmas was inherited by his five grandchildren, the children of William Porche Miles.
