The Parlange Plantation House (french: Plantation Parlange) is a historic

plantation house A plantation house is the main house of a plantation, often a substantial farmhouse, which often serves as a symbol for the plantation as a whole. Plantation houses in the Southern United States and in other areas are known as quite grand and e ...

Louisiana Highway 1 Louisiana Highway 1 (LA 1) is a state highway in Louisiana. At , it is the longest numbered highway of any class in Louisiana. It runs diagonally across the state, connecting the oil and gas fields near the island of Grand Isle with the ...

and

Louisiana Highway 78 Louisiana Highway 78 (LA 78) is a state highway located in Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana. It runs in a north–south direction from a junction with U.S. Highway 190 (US 190) and LA 411 in Livonia to LA 1 in Parlange. T ...

Pointe Coupee Parish Pointe Coupee Parish ( or ; french: Paroisse de la Pointe-Coupée) is a parish located in the U.S. state of Louisiana. As of the 2010 census, the population was 22,802; in 2020, its population was 20,758. The parish seat is New Roads. Pointe ...

Louisiana Louisiana , group=pronunciation (French: ''La Louisiane'') is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It is the 20th-smallest by area and the 25th most populous of the 50 U.S. states. Louisiana is borde ...

. Built in 1750, it is a classic example of a large

French Colonial French colonial architecture includes several styles of architecture used by the French during colonization. Many former French colonies, especially those in Southeast Asia, have previously been reluctant to promote their colonial architectur ...

plantation A plantation is an agricultural estate, generally centered on a plantation house, meant for farming that specializes in cash crops, usually mainly planted with a single crop, with perhaps ancillary areas for vegetables for eating and so on. The ...

house in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

. Exemplifying the style of the

semi-tropical The subtropical zones or subtropics are geographical and climate zones to the north and south of the tropics. Geographically part of the temperate zones of both hemispheres, they cover the middle latitudes from to approximately 35° north and ...

Louisiana river country house, the Parlange Plantation home is a two-story raised cottage. The main floor is set on a brick basement with brick

pillars A column or pillar in architecture and structural engineering is a structural element that transmits, through compression, the weight of the structure above to other structural elements below. In other words, a column is a compression member. ...

to support the

veranda A veranda or verandah is a roofed, open-air gallery or porch, attached to the outside of a building. A veranda is often partly enclosed by a railing and frequently extends across the front and sides of the structure. Although the form ''vera ...

of the second story. The raised basement is of brick, manufactured by enslaved people on the plantation. The walls, both inside and out, were plastered with a native mixture of mud,

sand Sand is a granular material composed of finely divided mineral particles. Sand has various compositions but is defined by its grain size. Sand grains are smaller than gravel and coarser than silt. Sand can also refer to a textural class o ...

, Spanish moss and animal hair (''bousillage''), then painted. The ground story and second floors contain seven service rooms, arranged in a double line. The walls and ceiling throughout the house were constructed of close-fitting

bald cypress ''Taxodium distichum'' (bald cypress, swamp cypress; french: cyprès chauve; ''cipre'' in Louisiana) is a deciduous conifer in the family Cupressaceae. It is native to the southeastern United States. Hardy and tough, this tree adapts to a wide ...

planks. There is an octagonal pigeonnier near the house. The home was once surrounded by a formal garden, but the garden was destroyed during the Civil War.

History of the plantation and the Ternant-Parlange family

Vincent de Ternant, known as the Marquis of Dansville-sur-Meuse, received the plantation grounds in a French

land grant A land grant is a gift of real estate—land or its use privileges—made by a government or other authority as an incentive, means of enabling works, or as a reward for services to an individual, especially in return for military service. Grants ...

and developed the 10,000 acres (40 km²) into an active plantation facing False River. When de Ternant's son Claude inherited the plantation, he changed the cash crop from

indigo Indigo is a deep color close to the color wheel blue (a primary color in the RGB color space), as well as to some variants of ultramarine, based on the ancient dye of the same name. The word "indigo" comes from the Latin word ''indicum'', m ...

to sugarcane and

cotton Cotton is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective case, around the seeds of the cotton plants of the genus '' Gossypium'' in the mallow family Malvaceae. The fiber is almost pure cellulose, and can contain minor pe ...

. When Claude de Ternant died, his second wife

Virginie ''Virginie'' was a French-language Canadian television series that aired Monday through Thursday on Radio-Canada (the French-language CBC television network). It debuted in 1996. The show examined the public and private lives of teachers, stud ...

remarried. (By her first husband, Virginie was the maternal grandmother of Parisian socialite

Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau (née Avegno; 29 January 1859 – 25 July 1915) was an American-born Parisian socialite, who gained notoriety as the subject of John Singer Sargent's painting '' Portrait of Madame X''. The suggestion of indisc ...

, who was the subject of John Singer Sargent's portrait "Madame X".) Virginie's second husband, another Frenchman, was Colonel Charles Parlange, from whom the plantation took its name. During the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states ...

, Parlange alternatively served as

Union Union commonly refers to: * Trade union, an organization of workers * Union (set theory), in mathematics, a fundamental operation on sets Union may also refer to: Arts and entertainment Music * Union (band), an American rock group ** ''Un ...

headquarters for General Nathaniel Banks and

Confederate Confederacy or confederate may refer to: States or communities * Confederate state or confederation, a union of sovereign groups or communities * Confederate States of America, a confederation of secessionist American states that existed between 1 ...

headquarters for General Richard Taylor. Colonel and Mrs. Parlange had one son, also named Charles, who survived the Civil War to begin a distinguished career as a State Senator,

United States District Attorney United States attorneys are officials of the U.S. Department of Justice who serve as the chief federal law enforcement officers in each of the 94 U.S. federal judicial districts. Each U.S. attorney serves as the United States' chief federal c ...

, Lieutenant Governor, federal judge, and finally justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court. After Virginie Parlange died in 1887, her son and his wife moved to

New Orleans New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans

. Judge and Mrs. Charles Parlange leased the plantation to tenants for the next twenty years, until their son Walter Parlange returned to Pointe Coupée Parish to take up the life of a plantation farmer. Today Parlange retains 1500 acres (6 km²), which are still used as a cattle and sugarcane plantation. It is owned and operated by descendants of the original owners. The plantation house remains largely intact and is occasionally available for private tours by appointment only. It is located near the intersection of

and

Popular culture

The Parlange Plantation and the history of Virginie de Ternant was the inspiration for the Bagatelle Plantation and the heroine Virginie Tregan in the novel ''Louisiane'' by

Maurice Denuzière Maurice Denuzière (born 29 August 1926 in Saint-Étienne) is a French journalist and writer. Biography After studying journalism and a career in naval aeronautics, he embarked on journalism. In 1951, he became a chronicler for ''France-Soir'' ...

.Dominique Auzias, Jean-Paul Labourdette: Petit Futé Louisiane

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Parlange Plantation House National Historic Landmarks in Louisiana Houses completed in 1750 Plantation houses in Louisiana Sugar plantations in Louisiana French colonial architecture French Houses in Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Louisiana National Register of Historic Places in Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana Cotton plantations in Louisiana

History of the plantation and the Ternant-Parlange family

Popular culture

See also

References