Introduction to Great River Road

If your image of plantations comes strictly from repeated viewings of Gone With the Wind, you may well be disappointed when you go plantation hopping. That particular Tara was a Hollywood creation -- indeed, in Margaret Mitchell's novel, Tara was quite different, a rambling structure of no particular style.

Plantation houses, at least the ones that are extant and open to public tours, are often more humble in scale (it wasn't until after 1850 that the houses got bigger, and most of these predate that). They also come in two models: the Creole style, which tends to be a low-slung, simple affair (Creoles preferring to keep the goodies on the inside where they can actually be enjoyed), and the American style, which is closer to classic antebellum grandeur. Nevertheless, these houses run smaller than you might think; even the "big" ones feel a bit cramped compared with certain lavish mansions built by turn-of-the-20th-century oil barons and today's nouveau riche. If your fantasies would be dashed without pillars and porticos, consider sticking to Destrehan, San Francisco, Oak Alley, and Madewood. Katrina had little to no impact on this area and it remains as picturesque as ever.

In the beginning the Creole planters of Louisiana were rugged frontier people. As they spread out along the Mississippi from New Orleans, they cleared swamplands with a mighty energy. Indigo, the area's first cash crop, had to be transported downriver to New Orleans. Even as you drive on the modern highways that course through some of the bayous, you can easily imagine the challenges those early settlers faced.

In spite of all the obstacles, however, fields were cleared, swamps were drained, and crops were planted. Rough flatboats and keelboats were able to get the produce to market in New Orleans -- if they weren't capsized by rapids, snags, sandbars, and floating debris, and if their cargoes weren't captured by bands of river pirates. These farming men (and a few extraordinary women) poled their boats to New Orleans, collected their pay for the journey, and then went on wild sprees of drinking, gambling, and brawling -- behavior that gave the Creoles of the French Quarter their first (and lasting) impression of Americans as barbarians.

By the 1800s, Louisiana planters had introduced farming on a large scale, based primarily on their use of (and dependence on) slave labor. With cheap labor available, more and more acres went under cultivation. King Cotton, which proved to be a most profitable crop, arrived on the scene around this time. So did sugar cane, which brought huge monetary returns, especially after Etienne de Boré discovered the secret of successful granulation. Rice also became a secondary crop. But natural dangers risked disaster for planters: A hurricane could wipe out a whole year's work, and a swift change in the capricious Mississippi's course could inundate entire plantations. So, there were always small fortunes to be made in the area -- and then lost.

The Riverboats -- After 1812 the planters turned to a newly invented water vessel for speedier and safer transportation of their crops to the market. When the first of the steamboats (the New Orleans, built in Pittsburgh) chugged downriver belching sooty smoke, it was so dirty, dangerous, and potentially explosive that it was dubbed a "floating volcano."

Over a 30-year period, however, as vast improvements were made, the steamboats came to be viewed as veritable floating pleasure palaces. The need to move goods to market may have floated the boat, so to speak, but the lavish staterooms and ornate "grand salons" put a whole new face on river travel and made a profound change in plantation life. A planter and his wife, children, and slaves could now travel the river with ease and comfort; many set up dual residences and spent the winters in elegant town houses in New Orleans. After months of isolation in the country, where visitors were few, the sociability of the city -- with its grand balls, theatrical performances, elaborate banquets, and other entertainment -- was a welcome relief. Also, it became possible to ship fine furnishings upriver to plantation homes, allowing the planters to enjoy a more comfortable and elegant lifestyle in the fields.

The riverboats did have a darker side, however. Along with families, merchants, peddlers, and European visitors, the boats were the realm of some cunning and colorful characters: the riverboat gambler and "confidence" (or "con") man. Plantation owners were drawn like magnets to the sharp-witted, silver-tongued professional gamers, crooks, and cranks. Huge fortunes were won and lost on the river, and more than a few deeds to plantations changed hands at the table on a river steamboat.

Building The Plantation Houses -- During this period of prosperity, from the 1820s until the beginning of the Civil War, most of the impressive plantation homes were built. It was also during this time that many of the grand town houses in cities like New Orleans and Natchez were erected.

The plantation home was the focal point of a self-sustaining community and generally was located near the riverfront; it may have been graced with a wide, oak-lined avenue leading from its entrance to a wharf (though some were much more modest). On either side of the avenue would frequently be garçonnieres (much smaller houses, sometimes used to give adolescent sons and their friends privacy or as guesthouses for travelers who stopped for a night's lodging). Behind the main house the kitchen was often separate from the house because of the danger of fire, and the overseer's office was almost always close enough for convenience. Some plantations had, behind these two structures, pigeon houses or dovecotes -- and all had the inevitable slave quarters, usually in twin lines bordering a lane leading to cotton or sugar-cane fields. When cotton gins and sugar mills came along, they were generally built across the fields, out of sight of the main house.

When the main houses were first raised, they were much like the simple "raised cottage" known as Madame John's Legacy on Dumaine Street in New Orleans -- with long, sloping roofs; cement-covered brick walls on the ground floor; and wood-and-brick (brick btw. posts) construction in the living quarters on the second floor. These structures suited the sultry Louisiana climate and swampy building sites and made use of native materials. Houses of the colonial period in this region were distinctly influenced by styles from the West Indies, very different from the grander revival styles that followed in the 1800s.

In the 1820s, homes that combined traces of the West Indian style with some Greek Revival and Georgian influences -- a style that has been dubbed Louisiana Classic -- began to appear. Large, rounded columns usually surrounded the main body of the house, wide galleries reaching from the columns to the walls encircled upper floors, and the roof was dormered. The upper and lower floors consisted of four large rooms (two on either side) flanking a wide central hall. They were constructed of native materials, with a few imported interior details such as fireplace mantels. There were no stone quarries in Louisiana; if stone was used (which wasn't very often), it had to be shipped by sea from New England and transported up the Mississippi River from New Orleans. Because the river flowed through banks of clay, however, bricks could be made on the spot. Cypress, too, was plentiful, and it did well in the hot, humid climate, which could quickly rot other woods. To protect the homemade bricks from dampness, they were plastered or covered with cement. Sometimes the outer coating was tinted, although more often it was left to mellow to a soft off-white. The columns were almost always of plastered brick and very occasionally of cypress wood; the capitals were of these materials or, rarely, of iron.

Grand & Grander -- By the 1850s many planters were quite prosperous, and their homes became more grandiose. Many embraced extravagant Victorian architecture and gave it a unique Louisiana flavor; others tended to borrow from the features of northern Italian villas, and some plantation homes followed Gothic lines (notably the fantastic San Francisco plantation, sometimes called "steamboat Gothic"). Planters and their families traveled to Europe more frequently during this period, and they brought back ornate furnishings. European masters were imported for fine woodworking until Louisiana artisans such as Mallard and Seignouret developed skills that rivaled or surpassed the Europeans. Ceilings were adorned with elaborate medallions from which glittering crystal chandeliers hung, and on wooden mantels and wainscoting, the art of faux marbre (false marble) began to appear. The wealthiest plantation owners were determined to make their country homes every bit as elegant as their New Orleans town houses.

Plantation houses also expanded in size over time, with some coming to have as many as 30 or 40 rooms. Families were quite large, and social life in the country consisted of visits from neighbors or friends who might stay several days or weeks. After all, travel was difficult; there was very little dropping by or popping in during those times. And certainly a Louisiana version of keeping up with the Joneses had its place as well: The Madewood house on Bayou Lafourche was built for no other reason than to outshine Woodlawn, the beautiful home of the builder's brother (unfortunately, not open to the public).

The planters' enormous wealth stemmed from an economy based on human servitude. The injustice and frequent cruelty of slavery, however, were the seeds of its own demise. Whether or not the issue of slavery caused the Civil War, it soon became a central target of the Union effort. When emancipation came, it had an inestimable effect on plantations all across the South. Farming as it had been practiced on the plantations was impossible without that large, cheap labor base. During Reconstruction, lands were often confiscated and turned over intact to people who later proved unable to run the large-scale operations; many were broken up into smaller, more manageable farms. Increasing international competition began to erode the cotton and sugar markets that had built the planters' large fortunes. The culture represented by the few houses that remain today emerged and died away in a span of less than 100 years.

The Plantation Houses Today -- Where dozens of grand homes once dotted the landscape along and around the river, relatively few now remain. Several houses that survived the Civil War have since fallen victim to fires or floods, and some have been torn down to make way for other things such as industrial plants. Others, too costly to be maintained, have been left to the ravages of dampness and decay. A few, however, have been saved, preserved, and treated to the installation of modern conveniences such as plumbing and electricity. Most of the old houses are private residences, but you can visit others for an admission fee (which, in some instances, supplements the owner's own resources to keep up the old house).

Tours of plantations are a hit-or-miss affair -- much depends on your guide -- and if you visit several, you'll begin to hear many of the same facts about plantation life after a while. The problem is that often the history of the house in question is lost in time, or it never had a particularly good story to begin with; consequently, other details, like the practicalities of plantation living, have to be thrown in to fill out a tour.