LeBeuf Plantation House, New Orleans Louisiana

Date added: October 07, 2023 Categories: Louisiana House Plantations & Farms

The land on which the LeBeuf Plantation House is located was part of a royal land grant to the Marigny family and originally was the site of a sugar plantation. In 1836 Prosper Marigny sold the property to Fucy Verret, an early settler of Algiers. Verret apparently built the home as a wedding present for his daughter Elmire when she married Martial LeBeuf, Jr., a doctor, in the late 1840s. In 1856 the estate was sold to the widow of Jacob Baker, nee Anna Maria Ott. She died in 1894 and left the property to a nephew she had reared, a riverboat captain named Luther Dock Ott. The Otts lived in the house until the government expropriated it in 1903.

The modern City of New Orleans completely covers Orleans Parish, and its suburbs extend into a significant portion of northern Jefferson Parish. For this reason, it is difficult to imagine the rural nature which once characterized this area. Nevertheless, in the early nineteenth century, New Orleans was a small city surrounded by rural plantation holdings. However, subdivision of these plantations began quite early, with the parceling of Bernard de Marigny's Orleans Parish property in 1805. When other plantation owners saw how profitable the subdivision trend could be, few failed to hesitate when presented with the chance to develop their property. Although the Lake Pontchartrain side of Orleans Parish remained undeveloped, most of the Mississippi River's east bank was subdivided well before the end of the 1830s. The Jefferson Parish plantations directly across from New Orleans were the first west bank lands to be subdivided. The community of McDonoghville came into being in 1813, Gretna in 1836, and Harvey in 1839. Across the parish line in Orleans, the west bank suburb of Algiers Point was developed in 1842. Development of the east bank in Jefferson Parish upriver from New Orleans was slower to evolve. Although Metairie was originally subdivided in the 1830s and Kenner in 1855, both saw their major growth after the turn of the twentieth century.

The breaking up of these plantations inevitably led to the destruction of the plantation homes that stood on the sites. The first reference found by the Division of Historic Preservation to the loss of a plantation house due to development is dated 1863. This destruction continued well into the 1950s when, according to a knowledgeable New Orleans architect, a large number of plantation houses were lost. Although it is not possible to know the exact number of plantations that once existed in the two parishes, an educated guess can be made by extrapolating information from historic maps. For example, the 1858 Persac map of plantations along the Mississippi River between Natchez and New Orleans shows approximately 100 plantations outlining both banks of the river in Jefferson Parish. However, this number is artificially low as an indicator of the number of plantations that once existed in the metropolitan area because all but seven of Orleans Parish's plantations had already been subdivided and developed by that date. It is reasonable to assume that Orleans Parish had a correspondingly large number of plantations before development began. Most of these Orleans and Jefferson parish plantation tracts would have supported large or small plantation houses. Now the Division of Historic Preservation believes there to be no more than fifteen plantation houses surviving in all of Orleans and Jefferson parishes. The LeBeuf House is one of this small group of survivors.

Building Description

The LeBeuf House is an antebellum plantation house built in the raised French Creole style. The brick and frame building was constructed c. 1840-1850. Owned by the United States Navy since 1903, the structure stands in the midst of a large military base on the west bank of the Mississippi River in the New Orleans suburb of Algiers. However, the home's immediate setting is park-like, consisting of an expansive and well-shaded lawn. It has received a series of alterations since its construction.

Creole features surviving in the LeBeuf Home include a hipped roof, an above-ground brick basement story surmounted by a frame primary living floor, a seven-bay upper gallery supported by slightly corbelled brick pillars, French doors, a Norman truss roof support system, and exposed beaded ceiling beams in some locations. Other surviving features of interest include Tuscan gallery columns, classical dormers, and some original Federal woodwork. This woodwork is simple in the home's rear rooms but more elaborate in the public spaces. It includes cornices on the gallery and in some rooms, fluted door surrounds with acorn corner blocks, and delicately subdivided transoms.

The house appears to have remained unaltered until its acquisition by the Navy. Then a series of modifications began which would bring notable changes to the rear and the interior. Modifications include:

1) the addition of two small wings to the house. The first, added before 1910, is a kitchen ell with its own brick basement story. This wing is attached to the home's rear southwest corner and has its own exterior stair. The interior of the kitchen has been re-worked twice, in 1941 and 1976. The second and smaller wing stands on the west (upriver) side of the building. It was built in 1924 and was raised on piers to the level of the upper story. Originally a bathroom, it was totally gutted and converted into a paneled study in 1941. By that date the area below the wing had also been enclosed for use as a laundry.

2) alterations to the building's rear elevation. No evidence survives to indicate the original configuration of the rear, and the area has undergone several alterations since its construction. Presently it consists of a range of rooms which includes a bathroom, a glazed sun porch with a projecting polygonal bay reached by an exterior stair, a butler's pantry, and two stair halls. One stair leads to the basement, while the other rises to the attic.

3) the 1941 conversion of the home's hall-less Creole upper floorplan to a center hall plan. The original plan was three rooms wide and two rooms deep. To create the center hall, the front and rear center rooms were subdivided into three parts. The upriver (western) third became part of enlarged, back-to-back living and dining rooms, the downriver (eastern) third was converted into bathroom and closet spaces, and the middle third became the center hall. The remodeling which changed the floorplan also resulted in several other significant interior modifications to the home:

a) Several interior door openings were closed and new openings were cut. Others were moved to different locations and two modern sets of French doors were installed. One window location was closed, others were moved or added, and one French door on the facade was converted into a window. All of the living room windows and transoms are now covered by large sheets of protective glass.

b) Three of the home's six fireplaces and mantels were removed entirely, and two of the remaining three were moved to new locations. The fireplace in its original location features a black marble mantelpiece in the Greek Revival style. It probably replaced an earlier Federal mantel. The mantels of the moved fireplaces are in the Italianate style and are also probably mid-nineteenth-century replacements. Marble hearths have been added to each fireplace.

c) Some of the home's Federal trim was moved to new locations, replications of the trim and transoms were created for other areas, and a new decorative square opening bisecting the central hall was installed. This opening is paneled and features Federal motifs.

d) The walls and ceilings were replastered and new flooring was installed.

e) The floor of the basement was covered by concrete, servants quarters were installed in the ell and the rear downriver (eastern) corner, the brick supports for the removed fireplaces were eliminated, and two columns were added in the center of the basement's large open area to support the weight of the floor above.

4) the 1946 installation of bedrooms, a bathroom, and a hallway in the attic. These rooms are reached via a new stair built on the sun porch at that time, and

5) the enclosure of the front gallery with plexiglass, the replacement of one gallery column, the installation of beaded board siding on the facade, and the construction of a covered breezeway leading from the rear sun porch to a nearby kitchen building.

A one-story brick outbuilding with a slightly overhanging shingle roof and one set of French doors also stands on the property. Originally a kitchen, it has experienced extensive interior remodeling as a guest house.

Also standing on the property is a one-story, three-bay, modern garage covered by vinyl siding.