Birg House - Columbia Hall, Franklin Louisiana

Date added: February 09, 2024 Categories:

Columbia Hall is a massive, rambling, late-nineteenth-century frame country house located about two miles northwest of Franklin amid flat canefields along Bayou Teche. The house has lost little of its original architectural fabric and has been little altered over the years.

The house has a central hall plan, three rooms deep, with a rear kitchen wing and second rear wing which contains a bedroom. The north front room is merged with the central hall to create a massive "L" shaped living hall which is the major spatial feature of the house. The most noteworthy aspect of the hall is the massive Eastlake staircase which turns the corner of the "L" as it ascends. The landing, at which the staircase turns the corner, is articulated with three elaborate octagonal newel posts which are embellished with contrasting dark wood panels. A similar newel is at the foot of the stair. The living hall communicates with galleries on two sides via French doors and floor-length sash windows. To the rear of the living hall are a living room and a dining room which are connected by means of a set of square columns. Both rooms have corner fireplaces, Eastlake mantels, and a paneled dado. The remainder of the interior features large plain rooms with standard late-nineteenth-century woodwork. The second story consists of a central hall and a pair of flanking bedrooms.

The exterior features square post, pent roof galleries on all four sides. Most of the gallery posts are formed of groups of planks set with spaces between in a manner resembling fluting. The roofline features a huge hip-roofed dormer on each side of the massive pyramidal main roof. In addition, the main roof is capped by a large hip roof monitor. Thus the complex roofline is articulated as a "bouquet" of pyramids with 32 different roof planes. The exterior also features movable louver shutters, porch balustrades, and entablatures on the dormers. Many of the window frames have pediment-shaped tops.

The only changes in the house since construction have been the sheetrocking of the interior walls and the modernization of the bathrooms and kitchen.

The Franklin area is mainly known for its Greek Revival architectural landmarks. Although the area has a large stock of late-nineteenth-century residential architecture, it is mainly confined to urban builder vernacular housing of standard design, such as shotgun houses, Queen Anne Revival cottages, etc. There are some larger residences which feature central hall plans, a modicum of asymmetry, and Eastlake ornamentation. But again these are more or less standard designs for a small town in Louisiana of the period.

Columbia Hall is superior to all of these because it is an individually designed structure with a larger and grander scale than any of its contemporaries in the Franklin area. More specifically, it is the only noteworthy example of the use of a living hall in Franklin or its immediate vicinity. Moreover, the boldly three-dimensional staircase, with its turning-the-corner design, appears to be unique among period residences in Louisiana. Finally, Columbia Hall's roofline, with its "bouquet" of pyramids and its 32 roof planes, is undoubtedly the most elaborate piece of architectural massing in the area.

The "Franklin area" is defined as a two mile radius around the city of Franklin. This area was a center of sugar production in the late-nineteenth century and consequently has a large number of period residences.