We woke up Saturday to cool temperatures, something we hadn’t expected just two days ago when the forecast called for springlike weather in Natchez. The forecast had taken a turn for the cold by the time we left Friday evening, so we packed coats, scarves and long underwear. I’m a hater of the cold, but I decided not to bitch about it like I normally would. This trip is for Gina’s 40th birthday and I didn’t want to ruin things like I normally would.
First stop was the visitor’s center for guidebooks and such. The center has an awesome display devoted to kudzu. First stop was Longwood, a giant antebellum home built in the style of an Oriental villa. It is billed as the largest octagonal house in the United States. A super rich plantation owner named Haller Nutt began building it in the late 1850s. He planned a six-story structure with 30,000 square feet of living space, but the war intervened and construction stopped with just the outside walls completed and only the basement finished.
Looking up at the unfinished upper stories of Longwood.
The family lived in the basement, which is much bigger than any home I’m likely to ever own. Nutt died in 1864 and construction never resumed. Nutt family members lived in the basement until the late 1960s when some kind of local garden club took the place over. The tour guide said she remembers playing in the unfinished upper floors as a kid. She also said Houston Nutt, the former Arkansas Razorbacks coach is a descendent of Haller Nutt.
After a lunch of fried-shrimp po’ boys at a cool little bar downtown (their cocktail sauce passed the Uncle Slappy test), we drove around lost for awhile looking for Melrose, a mansion owned by the National Park Service. The place was built by another super-rich dude who owned several plantations in Louisiana and Mississippi worked by 300 or so slaves. Dudes in Natchez were big into the slave scene. The city was home to the second largest slave market in the country. The original owner lost the place and all its furnishings to yet another super-rich guy during the war to pay debts. In part due to a stingy family descendant, Melrose is adorned with 95 percent original furniture, books, floor coverings and other accouterments. The grounds contain the original slave quarters and outbuildings. It was a bed and breakfast in the ’70s and ’80s until the Park Service bought it for $5 million.
Spring was well underway in Natchez. It seemed odd to be wearing coats and scarves while the camelias and azaleas bloomed all around.
We wrapped up the sight-seeing with a trip to the city cemetery, which has this memorial to unknown confederate soldiers killed in the war. I don’t know if the graves are real. I couldn’t find anything on the memorial that said so and there was no fighting in Natchez. The city was taken by the Union without a fight.
Comments
Cool picks, you know I like the south. Happy 40th B-day Gina you don’t look a day over 39. As far as the Nutter house goes I wonder if there’s a octagonal house out there billing itself as the countries largest octagonal house that was actually completed and if they are, are they full of scorn and jealousy towards the Nutter house. Even more sad… what if they are simply content with being the second largest octagonal house in the country. Am I missing out on a whole sub culture of the American home owners associations where oddly shaped houses are highly coveted?
Are there houses billing themselves as the largest triangle, trapezoidal or even rhombus shaped house in the country? If so you should quest around the country taking photos of these and make a coffee table book…..I’d buy it.