Oak Alley Plantation — manor house
Image by JamesDeMers from Pixabay

Oak Alley Plantation

  • 2 min read
  • 30.004° N 90.776° W

Interesting facts

  • Valcour Aime, who founded the plantation, was known as the King of Sugar and counted among the wealthiest men in the antebellum South.
  • The pecan bred here was so thin-shelled it was nicknamed the paper-shell pecan; the original trees were later cleared for sugarcane after the Civil War.
  • A grove of the pecans planted at nearby Nita Plantation was swept away when the Mississippi broke through its levee in 1890, erasing the last original trees.
  • The 1974 National Historic Landmark designation honours not only the house and oak alley but also the enslaved gardener Antoine's pecan grafting.
  • The mansion's walls of on-site brick are about 40 centimetres thick, and the hipped roof is covered in slate.
  • During the 1920s restoration the staircase was moved into the central hall and the original black-and-white marble floors were replaced with wood.
  • With sugarcane devastated by disease in the early 1900s, the Stewarts ran Oak Alley as a cattle ranch; Josephine Stewart had grown up on a Texas ranch.
  • The Stewarts were the last owners to live in the house, and their family graveyard lies on the grounds beside an old blacksmith shop.
  • Oak Alley inspired Braithwaite Manor, a plantation house in the 2018 video game Red Dead Redemption 2, and appeared in the 1964 film Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte.

Why it is worth it

Oak Alley takes its name from its most striking feature: a double row of 28 southern live oaks forming a green tunnel about 240 metres long between the Mississippi River and the house. The trees were planted in the early 18th century, more than a hundred years before the mansion at the end of the avenue was built, and their spreading branches meeting overhead give the avenue its name and its fame.

The plantation was established to grow sugarcane by the Creole planter Valcour Aime, who bought the land in 1830 and named it Bon Séjour. In 1836 he exchanged it with his brother-in-law, Jacques Télesphore Roman, and the following year people enslaved by Roman began building the present house, completed in 1839. It was probably designed by Roman's father-in-law, the architect Joseph Pilié. The Greek Revival mansion has a square plan organised around a central hall on both floors, and is wrapped on all four sides by a colonnade of 28 Doric columns — one for each oak in the alley. Its brick walls, made on site, are stuccoed and painted white to suggest marble.

The fortunes of the estate rose and fell with sugar and slavery. In 1846–47 an enslaved gardener named Antoine succeeded in grafting pecan trees to produce a variety with a shell thin enough to crack by hand; later named the Centennial pecan, it won a prize at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. After the Civil War and emancipation the plantation was no longer viable, and it was auctioned in 1866. By the 1920s the buildings were decaying, until Andrew and Josephine Stewart bought the property in 1925 and had the architect Richard Koch restore the house. Josephine Stewart left it to the Oak Alley Foundation on her death in 1972. The estate is a National Historic Landmark, and its alley has appeared in films including "Interview with the Vampire".

Getting there

Oak Alley stands on the west bank of the Mississippi in Vacherie, St. James Parish, Louisiana, on Louisiana Highway 18, the River Road. The nearest larger town is LaPlace, about 29 km away on the opposite bank. The nearest airport is Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport (MSY), about 49 km away.

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From the encyclopaedia

Oak Alley Plantation is a historic plantation located on the west bank of the Mississippi River, in the community of Vacherie, St. James Parish, Louisiana, U.S. Oak Alley is named for its distinguishing visual feature, an alley or canopied path, created by a double row of southern live oak trees about 800 feet long, planted in the early 18th century — long before the present house was built. The allée or tree avenue runs between the home and the River. The property was designated a National Historic Landmark for its architecture and landscaping, and for the agricultural innovation of grafting pecan trees, performed there in 1846–47 by an enslaved gardener. It was first known as Bon Séjour.

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