Felicite Plantation, Vacherie Louisiana
Felicite was built by the well-known Louisiana Creole planter Valcour Aime whose famous plantation, Le Petit Versailles, stood a short distance downriver in the heart of the Acadian Coast. The house was a wedding gift to his third daughter, Felicite Emma Aime, when she married Alexandre Septime Fortier. Septime, who was educated in France, became a planter, handling his own plantation and with his brother, Florent, operating the family plantation, Richbend. The Fortiers had 14 children at Felicite and continued to live in St. James Parish as indicated in the 1860 census. However, by 1870 they had moved to New Orleans where Septime was in the wholesale grocery business. He died in 1898 and Felicite lived with her daughter at 2642 Dumaine Street in New Orleans until her death in 1905.
The Bank of the Americas acquired part of Felicite Plantation in 1873, and the property changed hands three times before being sold in 1899 to Saturin Waguespack, a descendant of one of the original settlers of the German Coast. In 1901, Waguespack merged Felicite with nearby St. Joseph Plantation to form the St. Joseph Planting and Manufacturing Corporation. His descendants still own this family corporation today and are in the process of returning Felicite to her former splendor.
Architecturally, Louisiana is known for its fine collection of large and impressive antebellum plantation homes. The majority of these are located on the historic River Road between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. They represent the absolute apex of the plantation culture in Louisiana. Some date to the Colonial era and others to the thirty years prior to the Civil War when sugar cane cultivation produced immense wealth. Although found in different styles, these houses all share two characteristics. The first is their sheer size -- all are monumental two-story buildings that dominate their settings. The second shared feature is the presence of broad, pillared double galleries, which sometimes encircle the house. The columns may be monumental, in which case they rise to the roofline in one continuous shaft, or a separate series of columns may be found on each level. Felicite's monumental paneled wood columns, fine entablature, massive proportions, and other classical details clearly place it within the Greek Revival sub-group of the River Road collection.
No one will ever know the exact number of grand and monumental, high-style plantation houses that once existed on River Road; however, an 1858 map of Mississippi River land holdings and historic photographs of now lost examples suggest that many more existed than have survived. Today, only sixteen of these majestic River Road landmarks remain--six in the French Creole style, one Italianate, eight in the Greek Revival style and one (San Francisco) with a hybrid of influences.
French Creoles and Acadians originally settled Louisiana's River Parishes (roughly defined as those bordering the Mississippi River from Baton Rouge south) during the colonial period. Both of these groups built houses in the Creole tradition.
Although Creole dwellings once dominated the rural landscape of central and southern Louisiana, today perhaps only 300 - 400 examples of these buildings remain standing outside New Orleans. Of these, the majority are small or moderately sized one-story cottages, while only approximately thirty (30) are members of the distinct group of substantial raised plantation houses.
Although one immediately thinks "Greek Revival" when viewing Felicite for the first time (the same is true of the other River Road Greek Revival mansions), the house also has roughly half of the French Creole characteristics. These include decorated outdoor rooms on the second-floor galleries and an abundance of French doors in the first-floor exterior openings. Felicite's hipped umbrella roof and the heavy framed briquette-entre-poteaux construction with cypress weatherboard siding also shows the influence of early, Creole vernacular design.
The River Road region consists of the parishes of Orleans, St. Charles, St. John, St. James, Ascension, Iberville and East and West Baton Rouge. The region is anchored by the cities of Baton Rouge on the north and New Orleans on the south. The mighty Mississippi that divides these parishes was instrumental in the rapid growth of agriculture in this area in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and of industry in the twentieth.
St. James Parish, the site of Felicite, is located midway between New Orleans and Baton Rouge and is divided in two by the river. It is one of the original 19 parishes created on March 31, 1807, by an act of the Orleans Territorial Legislature. Prior to its creation as a civil parish, this area formed part of the Comte d'Acadie or Country of Acadia, which was composed of the old ecclesiastical parishes of the [sic.] St. James and the [sic.] Ascension, commonly referred to then as the First and Second Acadian Coasts.
The first Acadian exiles to settle in the region arrived about 1762. The land of St. James Parish is chiefly alluvial with some wooded lowlands and coastal marshes. The settlers found abundant fish and game and carved rich farmland out of the wilderness. Early crops included Perique tobacco, indigo and (later) sugar cane. (St. James Parish is still the only place in the world where Perique tobacco is grown.) The Acadians were industrious and a kindly and thrifty people. After arriving in Louisiana they worked hard and it wasn't long before they had gotten back the wealth they had lost by their forced migration. They did so well along the Mississippi River that the Acadian Coast was also known as the Gold Coast in the early part of the nineteenth century.
Downriver, the adjacent parishes of St. John the Baptist and St. Charles were settled by German pioneers brought to Louisiana by John Law and the Company of the Indies in 1721. This area was known as the German Coast. Gradually, the German immigrants intermarried with the Acadians and their descendants and began speaking French. The influences of all these settlers helped create the Cajun culture. These four parishes are known together as the River Parishes and are officially part of the Acadiana region.
Industrial lumbering became an important industry in the late 19th century. By the twentieth century, industry was dominated by agriculture and chemical plants linked to the rest of the nation by the river and railroads. Even with all the industrial growth, agriculture remains an important industry in the primarily rural St. James Parish today. Besides tobacco and sugarcane, crops include soybeans, corn, hay, oats, and vegetable farming; fruit orchards; beef cattle and crawfish farming. Felicite remains part of a family-owned sugarcane farm to this day.
Building Description
Built in 1846, Felicite Plantation is a grand Greek Revival plantation house located on the west bank of the Mississippi River in a rural setting above Vacherie in St. James Parish. This two-story house with frame exterior and briquette-entre-poteaux (brick-between-post) walls has undergone some alteration over the years, but its integrity remains intact. The front facade is essentially untouched by 20th-century changes. Felicite remains a rare example of the Greek Revival style with French Creole vernacular influences.
This double-galleried home has a rectangular plan with a central hall from front to rear on both floors. At each end of both halls, wood-paneled French doors with sidelights are featured in a shoulder-molded opening. Fourteen-foot ceilings on both levels contribute to the stately proportions of Felicite. The plan is almost symmetrical with a rear stair set into a side alcove of the central hall. Paneled cypress pocket doors join a double parlor on the upriver side of the grand hall on the first floor. There are two bedrooms on each side of the central hall on the second floor separated by a passage with a closet for each room. This unusual layout also appears on the first floor on the downriver side of the house.
Although Felicite's design is undeniably Greek Revival, elements of the structure show the influence of Louisiana's native French Creole architectural tradition. The briquette-entre-poteaux framing is an early form of French vernacular construction. This heavy timber framing method utilizes upright posts and diagonal braces with the spaces between filled with brick. Usually the entire brick-filled exterior surface was then finished with a coat of lime plaster, interior and exterior, to protect the surface; then often covered with clapboard, as is the case with Felicite. The house also features a high-pitched, heavy timber framed, hipped umbrella roof, which is not hidden by the entablature as is typical in Greek Revival mansions. This roof type is characteristic of the French Creole style. The shoulder molding detailing of the upper galleries with simpler doorframes on the ground floor is more typical of a premier etage, a Creole floor plan where the formal rooms are raised above the ground floor, even though Felicite's floor plan shows the Anglo influence of a center hall and formal rooms on the first floor. The more highly decorated upper gallery reflects the Creole tradition of using this area as an outdoor room. The ground floor openings onto the gallery, aside from the formal entries, are all French doors, which also shows the Creole influence.
Although not specifically Greek Revival or French Creole, other interesting features are found at Felicite. For example, the gallery balustrade resembles a stylized wheat sheaf pattern. This same design appeared at the long-lost Uncle Sam Plantation (demolished in 1940) and is also found on earlier Creole houses, such as Labatut. There are also unusual star-shaped vents cut into the tongue and groove wood porch ceilings. This star motif is repeated on the copper leader heads which connect the built in box gutters to the downspouts. During the course of restoration, heavy timber joinery details were uncovered that appear to be unique to the house. These include the framing of the great entablature and wood gutters carved out of solid blocks of wood and lap-jointed. Where damage necessitated replacement, the craftsmen replicated these joinery details and saved examples of the original for display. Operable louvered shutters protect all the window and French door openings as well. Felicite retains all of its nine original marble mantelpieces, although some are in need of repair. The two red Italian marble mantelpieces in the double parlor are in the Italianate style. The others are black marble in a simpler post and lintel-inspired design associated with the Greek Revival.
Although alterations have been made over the years and deferred maintenance and insects contributed to the structure's decline, many original decorative features remain. These include the previously mentioned mantels as well as handsome wood-paneled interior doors. Restoration of the house is ongoing with care being taken to match damaged elements exactly and utilizing traditional timber framing and joinery methods. Some of the brick infill in the briquette-entre-poteaux walls was removed on the first floor during a previous renovation but the timber framing remains and the brick is intact on the second floor. The rear gallery had been enclosed on the ground floor to house a kitchen but this portion of the gallery has been restored to its original configuration. A room encompassing two bays of the upper gallery on the rear facade on the downriver side of the house has been retained, as it is an historic addition associated with the house for approximately 80 years. This addition was implemented in a manner sensitive to the original structure with the walls set back to allow the monumental columns to shine through. Double-hung windows are centered in the bays between the columns and are properly sized to allow function of the louvered shutters. An upstairs kitchen tucked in a small passage behind the stair has been removed. There is anecdotal evidence of an early servants' stair in this location but in the absence of more concrete proof, there are no plans to restore this stair in the immediate future.
Three of the original six closets were converted into bathrooms in an earlier renovation. These bathrooms are in poor repair and plans to update both the plumbing and the electrical systems in the house are part of the ongoing restoration. A single-passenger Otis elevator was installed at the end of the center hall opposite the stair in the late 1950's. The owners are considering its removal. On the first floor only the vertical rails of the elevator are visible when it is in the upstairs position. On the second floor, it is boxed out resembling a small closet. The elevator is functioning and although it is obviously not an original feature of the house, the grand scale of the thirteen-foot-wide center hall is only minimally diminished by its presence.
The front upstairs bedroom on the upriver side of the house has an ornate pressed tin ceiling. This shall be retained and restored despite not being original to the house as it has been in place far more than fifty years. While the original tongue and groove wood forming the ceilings of the double parlor and the two downriver upstairs bedrooms remains intact and visible, most of the other ceilings in the house are not in good repair and are covered with 4'x8' fiberboard panels with battens or gypsum board ceiling tiles. These panels seem to cover lathe and plaster ceilings with significant water damage. The second-floor hall ceiling is plaster and the first-floor hall ceiling appears to be sheetrocked; both are in good condition. The restoration of both the ceilings and walls is part of the long-term restoration plan for the house. The floors are largely intact and where they need repair it shall be done with like materials.
Addition structures on the plantation include:
A small rectangular wood frame building with a gabled end and a corrugated metal roof. It appears to be 19th century. Oral history indicates that it was used as a kitchen until the 1930s when the rear gallery of the Felicite Plantation house was enclosed for use as a kitchen and utility rooms. It is located to the rear of the house on the upriver side. It is in poor condition and there is no hearth or chimney.
A circa 1920's shed with an attached screened porch in poor condition. It is located at the rear of the house toward the east side. (The Mississippi River runs from southwest to east at Felicite's location.) The family refers to it as the Delco building because this is where a generator charged large batteries to provide power to Felicite before the days of electrical utilities. It is said that Felicite was the first house in St. James Parish to have electric lights, which were powered by these batteries.
A wood frame garage housing equipment and vehicles for the farm. Felicite is part of a working sugar plantation and this building is located on the downriver side of the house at the edge of the sugar cane field. This building replaced an earlier garage that was destroyed by fire in the 1920s and was apparently rebuilt with the material from dismantled slave cabins. The heavy timber wall framing may support this story. The roof is framed with more contemporary materials and topped with a corrugated metal roof.
A rectangular wood frame building with storage on one side and stalls on the other. It replaced a larger barn that was destroyed in the same 1920s fire mentioned above. It is in poor condition.
A circa 1940s cattle shed with a dirt floor and no real foundation. It appears to be built from recycled materials and is in extremely poor condition.
A small wood frame shed, circa 1930, used to house a water pump.
Two mid-twentieth century wood framed poultry sheds with corrugated metal roofs in poor condition.
Dormer and gallery, front facade, view facing south-southwest (2010)
Front and side facades of Felicite Plantation's main house. View is to the south-southwest (2010)
Railing detail, view facing southwest (2010)
Porch ceiling with star-shaped vents and main entrance with Greek detailing looking down the central hall, view facing south southwest (2010)
Capital and entablature details, view facing south-southwest (2010)
Operable shutters cover full-height slip-head windows on the second-floor front gallery. View is to the west (2010)
Poultry sheds from rear gallery. View is to the west-southwest (2010)
Kitchen building with poultry sheds beyond. View is to the west-southwest (2010)
Upriver side of house. The view is to the northeast (2010)
Rear facade. View is to the north northeast (2010)
Delco building with the barn behind. The view is to the south (2010)
Wood frame garage building. View is to the northeast (2010)
Water pump shed, barn and cattle shed. View is to the northeast (2010)
Unusual joinery detail from the framing of the entablature. Photo taken in the Interior (2010)
View from double parlor toward front of house. Two original red Italian marble mantlepiece are the most ornate examples of the nine marble mantlepieces remaining in the house (2010)
