St. Joseph Plantation Built in a Raised Creole style that predates nearby plantations constructed in Greek Revival style. The home stands on brick columns 8 feet tall to protect from flooding. Built around 1830 by the Scioneaux family, the 12,000-square-foot residence features antique furniture-filled rooms that originally were heated by coal-burning fireplaces. Wide porches overlook the 1,000 acre property that’s still farmed for sugar cane. In 1840, Dr. Cazamine Mericq purchased the property from the Scioneaux family, and then sold it to Alexis Ferry and his wife, Josephine, who used dowry money from Gabriel Valcour Aime, Josephine’s father. Ferry remodeled the home, added four rooms and enclosed the ground floor to create a basement, where the open space had previously sheltered the horse-drawn buggy that Mericq used to visit his rural patients. According to the Live Oak Society of Louisiana, the company has 16 registered live oak trees on its property, some named after family members, with the largest boasting a girth of 23 feet. Officials estimate the trees are about 300 years old. Four of the huge live oaks shade the St. Joseph home’s backyard well, and iron syrup kettle 10 feet in width, several week-framed slave quarters, a detached kitchen and the remnants of a narrow gauge railroad that carried sugar cane from the fields. Doublewide French doors provide cross-ventilation for the home’s 16 rooms and cypress plank floorboards shine from decades of waxing. “This plantation has a wonderful history and is still a working sugar-cane plantation,” Boudreaux told a visiting group of St. CharlesParishTourismCenter volunteers. “With the grace of God and a little help from St. Joseph, the patron saint of Joseph Waguespack, we hope to keep it prosperous for years to come.” Joy Roussel, a tourism volunteer from Norco, said she just couldn’t get over how much work it took to restore the once shuttered and empty home. “I think it’s extraordinary what they’ve done with this place,” Roussel said. “There is so much history with this-that is what makes it so interesting to me.” Sylvia Lambert was interested in how the area’s families intertwined over the decades, and said the plantation’s history will help today’s residents unravel their genealogies. “This means a lot to the community,” Lambert said. “With so many people these days doing their genealogy-this makes it easier then going to the courthouse.” The plantation’s most famous son is Henry Hobson Richardson, one of the nation’s premier architects of the 19th century. He was born at St. Joseph Plantation in 1838. Richardson is renowned for designing the original Marshall Field store in Chicago and the Trinity Church of Boston, referred to by modern architects as being built in the “Richardsonian Romanesque” style. The home was occupied at various times but was closed in the 1970’s, Boudreaux said. Two years ago, when family members began renovation, they had to pry shutters off the windows that had been nailed on for Hurricane Betsy in 1965. All of the rooms feature period furniture. A square baby grand piano sits in the main hall and a worn desk from 1877 displays a model skeleton and medical instruments-possibly from Mericq’s day. The large dining table is graced with antique china and bottles of locally produced wine.
Posted on: Thu, 10 Jul 2014 09:15:46 +0000