Old plantation house Louisiana

North Bend Plantation, Oscar Louisiana

Date added: January 27, 2023 Categories: Louisiana House Plantations & Farms French Creole Federal Style

North Bend is a rare surviving example of a large fully raised Creole plantation Creole dwellings once dominated the rural landscape of central and southern Louisiana, but 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 houses, while only approximately thirty are members of the distinct group of substantial, fully raised plantation houses which are regarded as the apex of the Creole style. North Bend is one of these rare survivors.

North Bend is a large raised Creole plantation house that stands on the south bank of the False River in a rural section of Pointe Coupee Parish. Originally constructed around 1835, the two-story brick and frame structure was enlarged twice before 1900.

North Bend achieved its current configuration in three stages. The c. 1835 house consisted of two floors, one a brick lower story and the other a bousillage upper floor which served as the premier etage, or primary living space. Each floor was four rooms wide and one room deep with front and rear galleries. Sometime around 1850 the owners added one room to each floor on the western side of the structure. The lower room was brick, while the upper room was constructed of bricks between posts. Each room had a fireplace and shared an end chimney. As a result of this addition, the front and rear galleries were also expanded and the roof was replaced. Architectural evidence shows that the owners also replaced the home's original doors and windows and added new window openings as part of the c. 1850 improvement scheme, for all the surviving door and window frames on the upper floor match. The upper front gallery's flush board siding also was added at this time. The third stage in North Bend's growth occurred during the late nineteenth century when the upper rear gallery was converted into a cabinet/loggia range. This expansion strongly reinforced the Creole character of the structure.

In addition to the hall-less Creole floorplan described above, characteristics of Creole architecture found in North Bend include the following:

1) a gabled umbrella roof,
2) exterior staircases,
3) four sets of French doors,
4) exposed beaded ceiling beams on the lower gallery, loggia and within all interior spaces,
5) original chamfered gallery columns with lamb's tongue stops, and
6) four wraparound mantels, all of which are located on the upper floor. Three of these mantels are late examples of the Federal style. The fourth consists of a bracketed shelf that wraps around the flue. An additional Federal mantel is found within the lower floor dining room, but it does not wrap around the flue in the French manner.

Other features of interest found in the home include:

1) original brick front and rear lower gallery piers with corbelled bases,
2) four-light transoms above all upper-floor exterior doors,
3) interior doors and some exterior shutters composed of thick, beaded battens, and
4) cornices found in two upper-floor rooms. The older of the two is located in the second room from the east, which apparently served as the original salle or parlor. It probably dates to c. 1835 and is formed by a wide plank encircling the room. Added at a later date, a vernacular stepped cornice ornaments the middle room of the second floor.