Today we get to see a Big House! No, this isn’t it – this is the Visitors Center, across the street. The house is called “Shadows on the Teche”. Shadows is the house, named for the shadows from the giant Live Oak trees that envelope the house and grounds. Teche is the name of the bayou the house faces. (A bayou is a shallow, slow moving, muddy river…)
Here is the Big House, in all its glory…
The house was built between 1831-1834. It was occupied by four generations of the same family until 1958. Ownership was transferred to the National Trust for Historic Preservation one day before the fourth generation occupant died…
The house today sits on 2 1/2 acres near the center of the town of New Iberia. When it was built it was the center of a 158 acre farm. The farm was only as wide as the current property, about 325′, but it stretched over two miles in either direction. The family’s wealth came from their sugar cane plantation about 15 miles away. (Due to swamps, bayous, and water being generally everywhere, it took 5-6 hours to travel from this house to the plantation…) This farm was used for growing food to feed the family, their employees, and their 200 slaves. Fortunately, right before the Civil War the owner subdivided the farm with the intention of selling town lots and small farms. The war interrupted all that. However, after the war, they were able to sell the lots as needed to raise cash, and they were able to hire and pay their former slaves to keep the plantation going. In contrast, many (most?) plantation owners lost their land to pay taxes and other debts…
The grounds are beautiful, shaded by these 250 year old Live Oak trees…
Behind the house is the Bayou Teche…
We began the tour of the house on the front porch. In contrast to plantations in Virginia (Mt. Vernon) the front door faces the street, not the bayou. The stairs are here on the exterior, because interior stairs would block the breezes. Everything about the design of the house is intended to maximize bringing the cooling breezes through the house. Another unique thing is that the main living quarters are on the second floor, as protection from potential flooding. This house has never flooded, but it has come close. It is on the highest land in the area – about 18′ above sea level…
The first room we saw upstairs was the master bedroom and its adjacent sitting room..
The Living Room is in the center of the house, facing porches in the front and in the rear.
Two secondary bedrooms complete the rooms on the upper floor…
We noted that these clerestory windows are for decoration only – inside is a plastered wall…
On the ground floor is a work room and storage room… The Kitchen was in a separate building behind the house.
The formal Dining Room, used only for parties and distinguished visitors, is in the center of the ground floor.
In a corner of the Dining Room is a “cellarette”, where wine and other beverages were kept. Ice was inserted into the drawer below the bottles…
There was also an Office and a “Bathing Room” on the ground floor. The Bathing Room contained a bathtub. Other bodily functions were handled via a chamber pot or a commode chair… and slaves to empty them…
During the Civil War Union Troops occupied the ground floor rooms. Mrs. Weeks refused to leave, and she continued to live upstairs.
After the war Mr. Weeks was able to retain the former slaves as contract workers on the plantation and to pay them in cash, probably thanks to having the ability to sell lots carved out of the original farm.
The final owner and resident of the house was Weeks Hall, great grandson of David Weeks, who had built the house but died (in New Haven, CT) before the house was finished. Weeks Hall moved in around 1922. He never married and had no children. He added a bathroom and a Kitchen and lived in the house until his death in 1958. He had started to restore the house, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation finished the job, taking out the kitchen and bathroom and adding climate control to protect the contents.
After our very fun tour we traveled a few miles away to Rip Van Winkle Gardens and The Joseph Jefferson House… Joseph Jefferson was a wealthy actor who played Rip Van Winkle in live theater productions all over the country. He bought and built this place to have a country vacation home.
The house was an ugly conglomeration of Victorian kitsch…Fortunately for you, dear reader, interior photos were not permitted, so you didn’t have to look at it; however, we did…
The grounds (Rip Van Winkle Gardens) are beautiful…
We started the tour with lunch in the delightful cafe. We had seafood bisque and muffuletta, a sandwich made with round Italian bread and filled usually with cold cuts, cheese, and olive salad. The muffuletta is one of the great sandwiches of New Orleans and southern Louisiana. Food was great!
The fun history story here is that in the 1920s the house was bought by the neighbor, Mr. Bayless, a horticulturist. He designed and planted the gardens. In 1980 his son inherited the property. Having the same opinion of the house as I do, he had a new house built not far from the current cafe. Unfortunately, the entire property sits atop a salt dome, which was being mined, and oil drilling was taking place around the salt dome, which is quite common in this area. Oops! A drilling rig punched a hole into the salt dome and within a few minutes the lake dropped 150′ as it flooded the mines. The receding lake also took about 60 acres of land with it, including the brand new house of Mr. Bayless. Within a few hours the lake filled up again from the Gulf of Mexico via the local bayou. Today the lake is brackish, it contains some salt water fish, and all that remains of the brand new house is the chimney…
We returned to the Villa, and we had another GAM, where we met another five of the caravan couples…
And an enjoyable time was had by all…
Adventures in the Villa 