Belle Alliance Plantation, Donaldsonville Louisiana

Date added: September 29, 2023 Categories: Louisiana House Plantations & Farms Greek Revival

According to tradition, the plantation known as Belle Alliance came into existence when German immigrant Charles Kock combined three smaller Bayou Lafourche plantations into a seven thousand-acre holding sometime before 1846. According to tradition, a fire destroyed the original house in that year; the new house was erected on the location of the first house at that time. By 1860 the extremely prosperous Kock family owned 176 slaves. Although Kock died in that year, his heirs managed to retain ownership of Belle Alliance until 1915. It was Kock's son James who expanded the home in 1889, hiring Paul Andry (presumably of what would become the New Orleans firm of Andry & Bendernagel) as his architect. By 1926 C. Stewart Churchill managed the property, of which he and partner Dubourg Thibaut became owners in 1944. Mr. and Mrs. Churchill lived in the home, gradually repairing and improving it over the next several years. After their deaths, family members continued in residence until 1985. The property eventually came under the ownership of the Evan Belle Corporation, which sold it to Mr. and Mrs. Philip Grieve in 1998.

Assumption is one of Louisiana's older parishes, having been legally established in 1807. Its early population consisted of persons of French, Spanish, Acadian, and German descent. This mixture was expanded by the addition of Anglo-Americans after Louisiana became, first a territory (1803), and finally a state within the United States (1812). Agriculture has always been the parish's economic mainstay, with sugar cane the dominant crop. Perhaps because of its rural focus, Assumption has never developed large communities. The small town of Napoleonville is the only place of any size, and its population is only 802.

Despite its long history, Assumption Parish has few real architectural landmarks. The vast majority of Assumption's residences are small Creole cottages, shotguns, bungalows, and simple versions of Queen Anne Revival and Eastlake cottages. A handful of the latter display well-developed gallery decoration, and a few houses have projecting Queen Anne bays. Nevertheless, most of the parish's domestic architecture can only be described as undistinguished. For the most part, the region's commercial buildings also fall into the undistinguished category. Against this background, the parish's few landmark buildings assume added importance. These include one otherwise simple cottage whose major feature is a large octagonal turret reflecting the influence of the Queen Anne Revival style, a handful of architecturally important churches, two historic school buildings (one a restrained version of the Beaux Arts style, the other displaying a restrained Neo-Classical design), a small Neo-Classical style bank, two Romanesque commercial buildings, an Italian villa style parish courthouse with its accompanying Italianate jail, and two major antebellum Greek Revival plantation houses found along Bayou Lafourche. These dwellings are Madewood and Belle Alliance.

The Belle Alliance dining room in the 1889 addition is believed to be by far the finest late nineteenth-century interior in the parish. The only other possibility for an interior as impressive as the dining room would be the parish courthouse, but here the public spaces were never richly styled. Nothing can rival the dining room at Belle Alliance for its impressive scale, elaborate wainscoting, intricate Queen Anne Revival glazing and, above all, its well-detailed and monumental Italianate mantel. This mantel/overmantel set has the presence and scale which one would expect to find in a grand hotel lobby of the period rather than in a rural plantation house.

Like the economies of other Louisiana sugar parishes, that of Assumption Parish boomed in the thirty or so years prior to the Civil War. Sugar planters were among the wealthiest of the wealthy, building fine residences to reflect their standing. Almost all of the houses they built were in the wildly popular Greek Revival style. The number of major Greek Revival plantation houses produced during this architectural "flowering" will never be known exactly, although the census schedules for 1860 provide clues. On the eve of the Civil War, there were forty-five large slave holdings in Assumption Parish. Of this number, sixteen involved plantations with over one hundred slaves; the other twenty-nine had between fifty and one hundred slaves each. Only two of the forty-five holdings involved individuals who did not reside in the parish. Given the foregoing, it is clear that Bayou Lafourche, the parish's major waterway, was once lined with plantation houses, which for the most part would have been in the Greek Revival style. Today, however, only Belle Alliance and Madewood remain.

Building Description

Belle Alliance is a large, two-story, stucco-over-brick plantation house located on Bayou Lafourche on a sizeable parcel of land with broad sweeping lawns and mature trees. The house was constructed in two stages. The well-styled Greek Revival front portion dates from c. 1846, the somewhat larger rear portion from an 1889 expansion and remodeling program. Interestingly, the 1889 addition in many ways continues the Greek Revival styling of the original house. And, while a few modifications were made in 1889 to the original portion of Belle Alliance, they have not unduly impacted its strong Greek Revival character. Except for deterioration, the house has received very little alteration since the late nineteenth century.

Local sources place Belle Alliance's date of construction at 1846, which is entirely plausible given the architectural evidence. Certainly, the home's grandest feature is its colossal five-bay front gallery, which embraces the entire facade. Here graceful rectangular pillars ascend to strong drip-molded capitals. These support a full entablature surmounted by a high parapet which obscures the system of hip roofs behind. This treatment gives the house a very finished and polished Greek Revival appearance. The entablature is also distinguished by a boldly formed row of dentils which are part of the cornice. Belle Alliance derives additional distinction from its stucco, which is scored to resemble cut and dressed stone. A wide flight of steps ascends to the front gallery, where the main entrance is set within a relatively massive aedicule motif with a transom and sidelights. Floorplans prepared at the time of the 1889 expansion indicate that the house also had a full length rear gallery at that time. A historic photograph taken before the expansion shows a one-story polygonal bay attached to one side of the house. (Because only one side of the building is visible in the image, it is not known whether this bay was duplicated on the home's other side.) This bay is believed to have been added some time after the original construction date. It was probably removed before the 1889 expansion, as it is not shown on the plans.

Both floors at Belle Alliance contain a relatively wide central hall with three rooms on each side. As was the case in many Louisiana plantation houses, the upper story is the principal floor where all of the formal rooms are found. The two forward rooms on the north side are joined by majestic pocket doors to form a double parlor. The height of the first story, which contains bedrooms and other secondary spaces, is considerably lower than that of the second floor.

The principal story contains mainstream American Greek Revival features such as shoulder molded door and window surrounds. In the more formal rooms, the shoulder moldings are capped by a drip-molded cornice. In addition, these rooms also feature a heavy entablature below the ceiling. At one time each of the rooms in the double parlor had a black veiny marble aedicule-style mantel; one survives. Across the hall, the formal front room features a black marble shoulder molded mantel. The room immediately behind it has a black aedicule-style mantel matching the surviving mantel in the double parlor. The upper story also has floor-length slip-head windows throughout. It is not known how many decorative ceiling medallions once existed in the principal story; one survives in the south formal front room. On the lower story, three identical wooden aedicule style mantels survive. These feature an unusual scallop design in the entablature and the mantel shelf. At one time there was a fourth mantel but it has been lost.

As was mentioned previously, the house underwent a major building program in 1889. Surviving plans for this work identify the architect as Paul Andry. As in the original section, the upper story of the addition serves as the main living space. Wider than the original house, the addition consists of a range of relatively small rooms on each side with a wide single central space between. On the lower story, the central space is open. On the upper story, it takes the form of a large, almost baronial hall which apparently served as a dining room. Not quite square, the massive dining room measures twenty-six by twenty-eight feet. It features a high raised panel wainscot, a deep cove-molded ceiling, and a wide polygonal bay that opens onto a rear loggia where a stairway connects to the lower floor. The bay, which encompasses the entire rear wall, contains two large windows and a central three-part system of French doors. The openings feature decorative glazing bars in a lozenge pattern. The dining room culminates in a massive, intricately-made mantel which serves, in many ways, as the "altar" of the space. The lower portion is in the aedicule style but with extra visual energy given by the use of a decoratively inscribed pillar and a free-standing fluted column on each side, both with composite order capitals. The undulating entablature is surmounted by a massive demilune overmantel with anthemion plant motifs and a central keystone. The demilune is inset with a central Rococo cartouche. This mantel/overmantel set should probably be viewed within the context of the Italianate taste, but it has an almost Beaux Arts monumentality.

Like the dining room, most of the side rooms of the addition's principal story have cove-molded ceilings (although somewhat deteriorated). A curious aspect of these secondary rooms is that they feature a great number of Greek Revival (looking) shoulder molded door and window surrounds. Indeed, these almost match their counterparts in the original house. The doors almost match also, although the hinges are late nineteenth century. Evidently, architect Andry elected to copy these details from the original house. The only significant difference is that in the older section, the doors were false-grained (since painted over), while in the addition they have a clear finish. Mantels in the upstairs side rooms are obviously of late nineteenth-century vintage, mostly Eastlake. Another curious feature is the presence of Greek Revival (looking) aedicule style mantels in two downstairs side rooms. All of the mantels in the side rooms are set within corner fireplaces.

Equally curious is the addition's exterior. It duplicates the rusticated block, entablature, and parapet treatment of the earlier house to the point that it is virtually indistinguishable from the home's original Greek Revival architecture. Here, too, the architect evidently chose to copy the original detailing. Andry also installed a primitive cast iron I-beam to support the rear loggia, along with two cast iron columns. Another pair of cast iron columns supports the polygonal bay of the dining room. Apparently, the architect also repaired the front gallery with the same type of cast iron I-beams to support the front parapet. Finally, the tie rods that are anchored into the front gallery pillars with decorative tie-bar ends also date from this period.

The 1889 building program also incorporated various changes to the original house, including the addition of a flamboyant Italianate archway in the main floor's central hall, the installation of a fairly large leaded and stained glass skylight in the hall's ceiling, and the replacement of the original front entrance transom and sidelights with decoratively etched leaded glass. An important change was the removal of a staircase that occupied the upper and lower narrow north rear corner rooms. This alteration was made to accommodate the installation of a bathroom in the resulting space on the upper floor. A second bath was added in the narrow rear corner room across the upper hall. In addition, a flue was added in the upper central hall to service a decorative parlor stove which no longer survives. However, the most notable change was the addition of side galleries to the original house. Each is a two-stage affair with heavy stuccoed brick piers below and iron poles above supporting a lean-to galvanized iron roof. The gallery floor connects with the original front gallery, but the roofing system is recessed, thus allowing the original Greek Revival front gallery to dominate. In addition, the iron roofs are attached to the building below the entablature line, a factor which lowers their profile. The upper side galleries feature decorative cast-iron scrollwork brackets, screens between each bracket, and balustrades. The balustrades on the side and front galleries match. The previously mentioned pre-renovation photograph shows the original balustrade on the front gallery and, thus, indicates that architect Andry copied it for the 1889 galleries.

The construction of the side galleries raises an interesting question concerning the previously mentioned slip-head windows in the original main story. It is clear that they are original to the earlier period of construction, and those on the building's sides match in every respect those that open onto the (original) front gallery. Yet if the 1889 expansion plans are to be believed (and there is no reason not to), there was a period of over fifty years in which the side slip-head windows opened onto nothing, and there is no evidence of any interior bar or balustrade to keep people from falling out. The consensus opinion among architectural historians who have studied Belle Alliance is that originally these slip-head windows must have been fitted with some kind of exterior iron railing which was removed when the side galleries were built.