This Home Served as the Governor's Quarters During the Civil War

Mouton House, Opelousas Louisiana

Date added: August 25, 2024

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The Mouton House was built for Charles Homere Mouton and his wife Celimene Dupre Mouton. Mouton served as Lieutenant Governor in 1856. When Baton Rouge was occupied by Union forces in 1862, the state government was moved temporarily to Opelousas. During this time Governor Thomas Overton Moore stayed as a guest at the Mouton heme. Because of this association, Opelousas residents call the Mouton home the "Old Governor's Mansion".

The Mouton House stands as a notable landmark. It has highly decorated temple-like porticoes on both its front and rear elevations. It also has Corinthian capitals, pilasters, pediment-shaped lintels, and elaborate shoulder moldings which are not evident on the parish's other Greek Revival buildings. Although one other St. Landry house does display a fanlight in its simple pediment, the Mouton house has a fanlight on each of its four elevations. In addition, the Italianate treatment of the cornice also appears to be rare within St. Landry Parish. Only one other house with any evident Italianate features was found in the survey materials.

Building Description

The Mouton House is a one-story frame residence standing on a corner in one of Opelousas's wooded residential neighborhoods. Built c. 1850, the home is primarily Greek Revival in style but also shows a distinct Italianate influence.

The house is distinguished by a number of Greek Revival characteristics.

These include:

1) front and rear porticoes which resemble temples. The facade's three bay portico features four wooden fluted Corinthian columns with cast-iron capitals, a pediment with a broken entablature, a pronounced bracketed cornice, and a fanlight piercing the pediment's tympanum. The portico's ceiling is subdivided by three paneled beams that correspond to the bays created by the columns. Additional paneled beams outline the ceiling's edge. The rear portico is similar, except that it lacks the paneled ceiling beams and features four molded and paneled square pillars instead of fluted columns.

2) a front entrance featuring a single door framed by tall, thick Doric pilasters. This door is surmounted by a small two-light transom and a thick entablature whose single dentil band and a projecting cornice energize the otherwise smooth surface.

3) elaborate heavily molded surrounds decorating the two sets of unusual paired windows on the portico as well as the doors and windows within the home's more formal rooms. All of these surrounds feature pediment-shaped lintels and shoulder molding. However, those encasing the paired windows are somewhat unusual in that both the interior and exterior frames are composed of double-pedimented lintels. Surrounds in the less formal bedrooms are more simple in design.

4) Doric pilasters decorating the facade beneath the portico and the corners of the home, and

5) an entablature on the front and rear elevations.

The house's Italianate influence comes from its exterior cornice. It is composed of molded and scalloped brackets with suspended pendants. In addition, the home's surviving black marble mantel is in the Rococo Revival style, a popular design which blended well with mid-nineteenth-century Italianate motifs. Other interesting features in the house include its 14-foot ceilings, four panel doors, a balustrade whose balusters resemble horseshoes, large floor-to-ceiling windows opening onto the portico, tall shutters, gable parapets, an additional fanlight on each of the home's gabled ends, rectangular transoms over the interior doors, molded panels beneath the windows on interior walls, and tall molded baseboards. The floorplan is symmetrical and features formal central spaces flanked by two bedrooms on each side.

The Mouton House has experienced a few changes over time. These include:

1) the loss of a cupola,

2) a somewhat mysterious rearrangement of the interior floor plan. It is obvious that a paneled kitchen was added in the home's rear central space and that closets and two bathrooms were carved from previously existing bedrooms on each side of the home. However, it is not possible to determine the original plan of the home's central space (between the front and rear porticoes) without removing fabric currently in place.

3) the removal of a set of pocket doors,

4) the installation of new flooring in all but one room,

5) the addition of a built-in room divider in the center of the home,

6) the installation of a beaded ceiling in what is now the front central room, and

7) the possible loss of additional marble mantels and the loss of all the home's chimneys.

Although the floorplan has been changed and some mantels may have been lost, the missing pocket doors are stored beneath the home and could be re-installed. The inappropriate room divider and beaded ceiling could easily be removed. The loss of the cupola is regrettable, but the home's highly styled Greek Revival temple-like porticoes, refined entrance, and pedimented lintels, and shoulder moldings all survive intact. The building's Italianate cornice also remains unaltered. In summary, the Mouton House exterior still looks much as it did upon its completion c. 1850. Its fine Greek Revival and Italianate features make it a rare and locally important example of these styles.

Standing near the side of the property to the rear of the Mouton Home is a board and batten shed. It does not appear to be of the same age as the house.