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Coordinates: 30°00′22″N 90°46′36″W 30.00601, -90.776595999999998

Oak Alley Plantation

• Location & Contact Information
  • Address: Highway 18 Vacherie LA 70090
  • Telephone Number: +1-225-265-2151
  • Official Website: [1]
• Overview

Oak Alley Plantation is a historic plantation located on the Mississippi River in the town of Jacques Telesphore Roman . Jacques father-in-law, Joseph Pilie, was an architect and is considered the likely designer. The mansion has a square floor plan, organized around a central hall that runs from the front to the rear on both floors. The outside features a free-standing colonnade of 28Doric column s (on all four sides), a common feature among the mansions in the Mississippi Valley at the time. The house is characterized by high ceilings, large windows, a symmetrical facade and interior plan, and a 2nd-floor gallery for viewing purposes. The flooring was made of marble (since removed and now only wooden), the roof of slate, the house and columns of brick painted white to look like marble.The most noted slave to have lived on Oak Alley Plantation was a field slave named Antoine. He was noted as Antoine, 38, Creole Negro gardener/expert grafter of pecan trees for $1000 in JT Romans 1848 succession inventory. His claim to fame occurred during the winter of 1846 with the development of a new variety of pecans that could be cracked with ones bare hands. The shell was so thin that it was dubbed the paper shell pecan. The formal name given the new pecan was the Centennial Variety - named in honor of its later entry into competition at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, where the new variety won a prize. Antoine applied the science of grafting to develop this variety, and after trial from several trees, he was finally successful. The trees may be found throughout southern Louisiana, where once the pecan was a contending cash crop in the state of Louisiana. Although his original trees were cleared for more sugarcane fields after the Civil War, a commercial grove had been planted at nearby Anita Plantation. Its historical purpose was as an antebellum sugar cane plantation. Its architectural design was influenced by the local French Creole architecture derived from Caribbean plantation design. The plantation was ravaged by the Civil War but later restored.Oak Alley Plantation, which was originally named Bon Séjour, was sold at an auction in 1866. After passing through the hands of a succession of owners, it had fallen into disrepair in the 1920s. In 1925, the property was acquired by Andrew and Josephine Stewart, who commissioned the architect Richard Koch to conduct extensive restoration work. After Josephine Stewarts death, the management of the plantation was placed in the hands of a nonprofit organization, which opened the plantation to the public.The street address of Oak Alley Plantation is: 3645 Highway 18 (Great River Road), Vacherie, LA 70090, USA.Oak Alley Plantation is also located adajcent to St. Joseph Plantation on La. 18, the Great River Road. Both plantations are National Register of Historic Places of the United States.^[1]

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