Elaborate Greek Revival Style Plantation Home in Ascension Parish LA

Tezcuco Plantation House, Burnside Louisiana

Date added: August 26, 2024

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Tezcuco is a superior example of a Greek Revival plantation house. This can be seen in its plan, its size, and its elaborate and sophisticated detailing. Obviously it was the plantation house of a style-conscious prosperous planter.

The average surviving Greek Revival plantation house of this period in Louisiana is considerably smaller than Tezcuco and features front and rear galleries with simple, wooden columns and an entrance with a transom and side lights. If the interior features are intact, they probably include simple molded woodwork and wooden mantels.

Tezcuco is exceptional for the following reasons:

(1) Its floor plan is more elaborate and developed than that of the typical plantation house of the period.

(2) The fifteen-foot ceilings give the rooms an unusual grandeur and spaciousness.

(3) The interior features are remarkably intact and include elaborate moldings on the cornices and friezes, ceiling medallions, three marble mantels, faux bois doors, and battered door surrounds.

(4) The extensive use of ironwork on the porches and front gallery is unusual.

(5) The six dormers have more elaborate Greek Revival detailing than is commonly found.

(6) While the Greek Revival influence is prevalent in the house (dormers, gallery, entrance and interior woodwork), the Italianate is also present in the somewhat heavier, more pronounced mantels, ceiling medallions, ironwork, and foliated plaster cornice work. This reveals a clear effort on the builder's part to incorporate the latest decorative elements, which did not gain general favor in Louisiana until after the Civil War, into a classic antebellum Greek Revival plantation house.

Building Description

Tezcuco, a 1½ story frame Greek Revival plantation house, is located on the east bank of the Mississippi River near Burnside. It is set back from the River Road behind numerous oak trees. Except for the few alterations explained below, the residence retains its original c.1855 appearance on both the exterior and interior. Also included is a contemporaneous Creole cottage which echoes the architecture of the main house.

The raised house is finished with flush board siding and rests on a stuccoed brick basement with similar piers under the galleries and porches. The tin-covered hip roof has gabled, pedimented dormers with entablatures and pilasters. The building block, which includes front and rear galleries, has an entablature and brackets with ball drop finials. Heavy square columns support these galleries, while ironwork in an elaborate grape and vine pattern is found on the two side porches. The same ironwork forms the railing on the front gallery. The central entrance has relatively simple side lights and a transom, but it is surrounded by pilasters topped by a heavy overdoor with an entablature. The glass paneled doors have muntins set in a Gothic pattern.

The relative simplicity of the exterior belies the luxurious detail of the interior. The cornices and friezes of the major rooms have moldings of an intricately foliated design. The doors, a number of which are faux boised, are surrounded throughout by battered, shoulder molded door surrounds with deep architraves. In addition, there are elaborate ceiling medallions and three marble mantels with round-arched openings and cartouches. Also noteworthy are the fifteen-foot ceilings found throughout the house.

The plan of the house amounts to an enlarged and developed version of the traditional Creole plantation house plan. The traditional form has a hall-less plan, three rooms wide and one room deep with rear cabinets flanking a gallery. Tezcuco's plan is similar in concept, but is an enlarged and more complex lineal descendant. Small rooms exist where cabinets should be, but one of them is doubled, The space where the rear gallery should be is taken up by a long and impressive rear dining room. This complex plan is encompassed by a full front and rear gallery. Evidently the two side galleries were not originally planned for the house, but were added during construction.

The following alterations have been made:

(1) In the late nineteenth century, the ends of the rear gallery were enclosed to form "cabinets."

(2) Circa 1955, a small room was added to the rear of each of the side porches in order to install modern bathrooms, a modern kitchen (housed in a sunporch) was added on the side porch on the upriver elevation, a vestibule entry to the basement was constructed next to the front steps, and the rear gallery was enclosed by inserting sheets of plywood between the columns.

Also included as a contributing element is a mid-nineteenth century, two-bay, briquette-entre-poteaux Creole cottage, The entablature, columns, and brackets on the gallery reflect the styling of the main house and indicate that it was constructed at the same time. The moldings on the door frames, which are similar to those on the doors of the late-nineteenth-century "cabinets" of the main house, and the clapboarding on the facade, which suggests a construction date later in the nineteenth century, are probably replacements.