Nottoway Plantation

Nottoway Plantation, also known as Nottoway Resort, and Nottoway Plantation House, is a historic plantation complex located near White Castle, Louisiana, United States. The plantation house, which was destroyed by fire in 2025, was a Greek Revival and Italianate-styled mansion built for John Hampden Randolph in 1859. With 53,000 square feet (4,900 m²) of floor space, it was the largest surviving antebellum plantation house in the Southern United States, and the second largest ever constructed of its kind; it was destroyed by a fire on May 15, 2025. Several dependencies and historic structures remain intact on site despite the loss of the main house.

Mansion and grounds

Architecture

John Randolph commissioned renowned architect Henry Howard of New Orleans with the task of designing the grand mansion, with the intention that no expense would be spared in the construction. Howard situated the three-story wooden frame house, which includes a one-story rusticated stucco-covered brick base on a concrete foundation, to face east towards the Mississippi River. The entrance facade was asymmetrically balanced, with a projecting bedroom wing to the left side and a large curved bay with galleries on the right. The main five-bay structure, with a central projecting portico, emphasized height rather than width, with the main living areas on the second and third stories both being 15.5 feet (4.7 m) in height above the one-story basement, scored to appear as stone, and featuring an arched niche flanked with narrow fenestrations. The galleries were embellished with custom ornamental iron railings made in New Orleans and capped with molded wooden handrails. Double curved granite staircases, installed by skilled mason, Newton Richards, rose to the second story. These steps were built with the left side intended for ladies and the right for gentlemen. The boot scraper at the bottom also identified the steps for the men. The separate staircases were so that the men would not see the women's ankles beneath their skirts as they climbed, which was considered a severe breach of social etiquette at the time. The close spacing and angularity of the gallery's 22 square columns and elongated capitals also emphasized the vertical qualities of the house. Above the capitals, small brackets branched out to carry a tall entablature decorated with modillions, supporting a projecting cornice that nearly covered the hipped roof that was pierced with six chimneys. In the rear of the house was a two-story garçonnière wing where the Randolph sons resided.

Construction of Nottoway was completed in 1859 at an estimated cost of $80,000 (~$2.23 million in 2024). Randolph destroyed the architect's plans after completion to prevent any duplicate homes from being built. With 53,000 square feet (4,900 m²) of floor space, it was one of the largest antebellum plantation homes in the United States, surpassed in size only by Belle Grove Plantation in neighboring Iberville Parish and potentially the Windsor Plantation in Mississippi, neither of which exist today.

Interiors

Nottoway had over an acre (4,050 m²) of floor space spread out over three floors and a total of 64 rooms with 165 doors and 200 windows, most of which could double as doors. The house enjoyed 19th-century novelties such as a bathroom on each floor with flushing toilets and hot and cold running water, gas lighting throughout the house, and a complex servant call-bell system. The principal rooms of the house were located on the second floor. The entrance hall ran the length of the house and was 12 feet (3.7 m) wide and 40 feet (12 m) long. Large Baccarat crystal and brass chandeliers hung from the 15.5-foot (4.7 m) high ceilings, and the doors with hand-painted German Dresden porcelain doorknobs and matching keyhole covers, leading to the adjacent rooms, were 11 feet (3.4 m) tall. Above the doors and along the ceilings were plaster frieze moldings, with modillions interspersed with paterae, made from mud, clay, horse hair, and Spanish moss. To the right of the entrance hall was the most unusual, and John Randolph's favorite room in the house: the White Ballroom. With Composite columns, hand-cast archways, and an L-shaped extension into a curved bay, Randolph had it painted entirely white, including the flooring, to show off the natural beauty of his seven daughters, six of whom were married there. Featuring two fireplaces with hand-carved rococo white marble mantles, there was also an original mirror placed so that the women could see if their ankles or hoops were showing beneath their skirts. Over one of the fireplaces, there was a painting of Mary Henshaw (no relation to the family), whose eyes were said to follow the viewer around the room. Flanking the entrance hall to the left was a gentleman's study, a stair hall, and the formal dining room. The study and the dining room featured black Italian hand-carved marble mantles on their coal-burning fireplaces, and the rooms were filled with period antique furniture. The dining room plasterwork showcased pink camellias, Emily Randolph's favorite flower, and was the only plasterwork in the house to have color.

The main staircase of Honduran mahogany was covered in green velvet and ascended to the Ancestral Hall on the third floor. The hall was used by the Randolphs as a family parlor, as a central thoroughfare to many of the adjacent bedrooms, and gave access to the third-floor gallery with views of the Mississippi River. Nearby was the main bedroom, with one of the three original bathrooms, as well as a small room that was used as a nursery for Julia Marceline, Randolph's last and only child born at Nottoway. During the Civil War, Emily Randolph utilized a bedpost to hide valuable jewelry at the end of the bed. Though originally bedrooms, one had been made into a music room displaying 19th-century musical instruments, and another, known as the Wicker Room, featured wicker furniture owned by the Randolph family.

The first-floor basement had been transformed into a restaurant and a small museum about the Randolph family and the history of the plantation. Initially, the space held the laundry, dairy, wine cellar, slave quarters, and a 10-pin bowling alley for the children's amusement.

Grounds

John Nelson of New Orleans designed the Nottoway landscape to include 120 fruit and citrus trees, 12 magnolia trees, poplar, live oak trees, 75 rose bushes, 150 strawberry plants, and a variety of flower and vegetable gardens. However, due to neglect and the erosion of six and a half acres of land by the Mississippi River, the gardens designed by Nelson no longer exist. Today, the house sits only 200 feet behind a river levee, and the grounds include a small formal hedge garden adjacent to the garçonnière where the detached kitchen once stood, and a fountain courtyard in front of the southern bedroom wing. Surrounding the house are modern ancillary buildings that house offices and event facilities. The owners expanded the property in 2008 by building a carriage house, ballroom, and nine Acadian-style cottages modeled after the property's original slave quarters, while the plantation was closed to the public for repairs, as a result of damage incurred by Hurricane Gustav. To the north of the house is the reconstructed stables, now re-purposed as a ballroom, and the Randolph cemetery where the remains of the family were reinterred in 2003.

History

19th century

John Hampden Randolph was born in Virginia in 1813, a member of the prominent Randolph family. He migrated with his family to Mississippi when his father, Peter Randolph Jr., was appointed a federal judge in Woodville, Mississippi, by President James Monroe in 1820.

John Randolph married Emily Jane Liddell in 1837 and had eleven children. Randolph devoted most of his time to his cotton plantation, but believing growing sugar cane and producing sugar would be more lucrative, he decided to move his family to southern Louisiana in 1842, where he purchased a 1,650 acres (6.7 km²) cotton plantation that he named Forest Home. Converting the plantation to the new crop two years later and constructing Iberville Parish's first steam-powered sugar cane mill, Randolph was able to triple his earnings over his cotton production. Within ten years, Randolph had increased his holdings to 7,116 acres (28.80 km²) and acquired 176 slaves, making him one of the more prominent slaveowners in the Southern United States. In 1855, Randolph purchased an additional 400 acres (1.6 km²) of highland, and 620 acres (2.5 km²) of swamp and Mississippi River-front land, where he sought to build a more prestigious home that he named "Nottoway", after Nottoway County, Virginia, where he was born.