Beauvoir

On the advice of our friend Thade Rachwal, yesterday we visited Beauvoir, an estate right on the coast a half hour east of Bay St. Louis, between Gulfport and Biloxi.

The house, built in 1848-52 as a summer house, was the home in the 1880s of the ex-president of the Confederate States of America, Jefferson Davis.  Before the Civil War Davis was a senator from Mississippi and had a plantation "upstate" near Natchez.  Hearing about his hard times after the war, the owner of Beauvoir, a professed admirer, invited him to come and live in one of the two small houses on the property.  Shortly after he bought the place.  The property was sold by Davis's widow to the Sons of Confederate Veterans in 1903 and they have owned it ever since.

We couldn't help notice similarities in form and features (although certainly not in size!) with a certain house we are more familiar with.

Beauvoir, described as a raised Louisiana Cottage, is essentially a large Ontario Cottage.  Raised -- partly to make it more impressive, but mainly to help with air circulation.  And instead of a back wing or tail, as is often found at home, it has two back wings on either side, so the plan is like a shallow "U" rather than a "T."

(My old friend Lynne DiStephano's long-awaited The Ontario Cottage: Perfect of Its Kind will doubtless explain the origins of this house form and how variations are found elsewhere.)

A striking presence on the property is the handsome Jefferson Davis Presidential Library, just opened last year.  The "Presidential" should really be in quotes -- it seems every American president, rebel or not, has to have a monumental library!

The two small houses or pavilions are perfectly matched and symmetrically placed on either side of the main house (they are reconstructions, the originals destroyed by Hurricane Katrina).  I made myself at home on the porch of one.

The main house was very, very badly damaged by Katrina.  Yikes!

Amazingly the house has been meticulously restored.  Here are some shots of the gorgeous interior.

Like so much of the antebellum South, the place evokes mixed emotions.  Reverence for the "Lost Cause" is especially tangible here.  This book, for sale in the gift shop, was one we could definitely pass up!