A Louisiana outing

Bay St. Louis, where we're staying, is not far from the Louisiana border.  Last Sunday we took a day trip to West Monroe, LA, curious to see the haunts of the Robertson family of Duck Dynasty fame (don't tell me you've never heard of them).

No, we didn't!  We went to Destrehan, LA instead.

This is the main house at Destrehan Plantation.  The house was built in 1790, when Louisiana was a Spanish colony, before Napoleon got it back in 1800 and then sold it to the Americans in 1803.  In the early nineteenth century wings on either side of the house were added and the colonnaded gallery; inside the house was remodelled in the Greek Revival style. 

Centre of main facade

Gallery of main facade

Centre of rear facade

The main facade faces the river road and, just across the levee, the Mississippi River.  The property was originally something like 6000 acres and, under the ownership of Jean Noel Destrehan and his family, became the largest sugar plantation in St. Charles Parish (in Louisiana a parish is equivalent to a county).

Many, many enslaved people toiled here of course, and we found it interesting that part of the Oscar-nominated movie Twelve Years a Slave, a truly harrowing story depicting the real (as opposed to honey-coated) face of slavery in the South, was filmed here, at the mule barn behind the house.

Destrehan Mule Barn

Just beyond the mule barn is a chain-link fence, and beyond that an oil refinery!  In an all-too-familiar story the plantation house was almost lost after an oil company acquired the property and let the place go to rack-and-ruin; but thanks to a group of volunteers, the River Road Historical Society, Destrehan was saved in the 1970s and, over many years, restored.  The society owns and operates the few acres left of the plantation, which include the main house and outbuildings (moved here from elsewhere, in an effort to recreate the plantation community) and some magnificent live oaks.

Oh, and one of the more unusual features of the house -- the water towers (two of course, symmetrically placed).  Echoes of the Royal Pavilion at Brighton?