Hand-Hewn Cypress Beams

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Antebellum, bald cypress, brick piers, Creole, Creole architecture, Creole Cottage, cypress beam, cypress tree, Cypressene, gallery, Historic Preservation, Louisiana, Louisiana architecture, Old-growth, Plantation, Point Houmas plantation, Restoration, Slavery, termites, Vernacular, water resistant, wood working

One of the structural characteristics of Point Houmas plantation that caught my eye during my visit a few months back was the massive hand-hewn cypress support beams that rested on top of the brick piers under the house. The beams were about 16″ on each side, as wide as the brick piers. You can see the original ax marks in one of the beams above, a testament to the age of the cypress and the house. As the old saying goes, “They just don’t make ’em like that anymore.” I’ve written about cypress and it’s relationship with vernacular Louisiana architecture before, but here’s a quick refresher on why it was such an important building material:

“Some cypress trees were over 160 feet tall and lived up to 3,000+ years. The odorless wood of bald cypress has long been valued for its water resistance, thus is called ‘wood eternal’. Still-usable prehistoric wood is often found in swamps. What makes cypress so rot resistant is an oil called cypressene located in the heartwood.  Old growth contains the highest concentration of cypressene. The heartwood is extremely rot and termite resistant. The heartwood contains a sesquiterpene called cypressene, which acts as a natural preservative. It takes decades for cypressene to accumulate in the wood, so lumber taken from old-growth trees is more rot resistant than that from second-growth trees.

Bald Cypress wood was the perfect construction material for south Louisiana for 3 reasons:

1) It was virtually rot resistant. If kept either wholly above or wholly below ground – if half in or half out, it will rot very quickly, however.

2) Cypress kept termites out (people would augment it by sprinkling crushed lime around the house)

3) It was found in abundance.”

In fact, old growth bald cypress trees were so large prior to the 1920s and especially in antebelleum Louisiana, when they were felled, master-builders and slaves had to dig a trench under the main portion of the trunk in order to carve the tree into a suitable cypress. It was so much easier to carve the tree where it lay than try and haul it to another site.

Point Houmas plantation takes many of its architectural details from the traditional Creole cottage style: it’s raised several feet off the ground on piers; generous galleries set beneath its spreading roofline; one range of rooms paralleled by a front gallery; and of course, the use of hand-cut cypress as a building material. Given the size of the beams and the structure, Point Houmas is incredibly unique and distinct within the Creole architectural lineage.

 

Point Houmas Plantation

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360 Grassroots, Adrien Persac, Alabama, Architecture, brick piers, capped chimneys, Colonel J.L. Manning, Creole architecture, Darrow, Donaldsonville, Eastlake, historic, Historic New Orleans Collection, Historic Preservation, house moving, Ian Crawford, Italianate, Jemison Van De Graaff Mansion, loggia, Louisiana, Map of the Mississippi, Mississippi River, neglect, New Orleans, non profit, Plantation, Plaster, pocket doors, Point Houmas plantation, repointing, Restoration, River Road, Sugarcane, The Cabin Restaurant, Tuscaloosa

Recently I had the opportunity to walk through Point Houmas plantation across the river, close to Donaldsonville. Currently abandoned, Point Houmas sits on a point called Point Houmas on the edge of a massive sugarcane field. The whole point has been zoned heavy industrial, threatening the future of the plantation home. The purpose of our visit was to determine if the plantation was able to saved and moved across the river to land owned by my in-laws in Darrow. The moving and restoration of Point Houmas would have been conducted under their non-profit, 360 Grassroots.

Point Houmas is an incredible plantation home. The building is still in great shape, given that it has sat neglected for at least 35-40 years. Much of the original plaster on the ground level ceiling still survives. The 8 foot brick piers that lift the building off the ground are in good shape, although could use a little bit of repointing here and there. The house is so high off the ground that you could easily drive a care under it. The building does have a relatively new roof and does appear watertight, although the chimneys had been capped and cut when the roof was added.

As you can see in the pictures, the house has a very simple Creole-style floor plan, with 2 parlors in the front and 3 rooms in the rear. The front porch wraps around about half the house, while the rear porch was enclosed to create a faux loggia. The ceilings are 16′-17′ high (they make you feel pretty small as you walk through the house), and it appears that the pocket doors separating the parlors are original.

Rendering by Ian Crawford

The style of Point Houmas is Eastlake, with a touch of late-Italianate due to the appearance of dentil work. This allows me to roughly date the home to the 1870s, early 1880s. The owner of Point Houmas plantation, according to Adrien Persac’s 1858 “Map of the Mississippi”, was a man by the name of Colonel J.L. Manning. I have not been able to find too much history on Col. Manning or Point Houmas, but plan to carve out some time this year to head to the archives at the Historic New Orleans Collection to dig a little deeper. My good friend, Ian Crawford, director of the Jemison-Van de Graaff mansion in Tuscaloosa, was able to put together a rendering of what we think it may have looked like originally.

Point Houmas is an absolute gem on River Road, but unfortunately the cost of moving and restoring the plantation was well beyond our limited budget. As for now, it is still sitting on the point across the river from The Cabin, waiting for a friend to save it from what seems an inevitable date with an industrial plant. As far as I know, the owner is willing to donate to the building to a non-profit as long as the person pays all moving costs. I will update in the future if I hear any news on the plantation. Please spread the word about this historic Louisiana plantation!

Flooding in Ascension Parish!

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Architecture, Ascension Parish, Baton Rouge, brick piers, Cajun, Creole, Creole architecture, flooding, historic architecture, historic brick, Historic Preservation, inundation, Louisiana, Louisiana brick, Masonry, mortar, Philadelphia brick, rain, Restoration, The Advocate, The Cajun Village

So we had a bunch of rain last week and due to The Cajun Village‘s location, and thus we were under water for a few days. Ascension Parish got anywhere from 10-15 inches of rain on Thursday, quite the inundation! We also have a hard time pumping water due to inefficient or ineffective pumps and gravity fed drainage, so the water stuck around for the last few days.

I wrote about unique architectural ways that Cajuns, Creoles, and Louisianans dealt with the wet environment in Louisiana over the last 300 years a few weeks ago. Luckily, the historic buildings in The Cajun Village were restored properly and were placed high enough on piers that none of our buildings flooded.

Most of our buildings in the Village are supported by brick masonry piers. The beauty of the old brick piers is that they are unaffected by water. The mortar in between the bricks is permeable, allowing the piers to absorb water and breath. The masonry bricks, especially those of the older variety (prior the Philadelphia brick variety that was introduced to Louisiana in the mid- to late-1800s) were much softer than bricks we are used to today, with more pockets of air, were also able to absorb and release moisture just like the mortar. This combination of mortar and brick was and is perfect for when it floods. I am happy to report that all our buildings withstood the flooding with no damage at all.

Yet another example of adapting construction and architectural design to the natural environment that saves the buildings!

Adapting Architecture to a Wet Climate

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adapting architecture, Architecture, brick piers, Cajun, Cajun architecture, climate, Creole, Creole architecture, Cypress, Cypressene, Destrehan Plantation, environment, hipped roof, Historic Preservation, humid, Jazzy Jewels, Louisiana, muggy, Plantation, sloped galleries, The Cajun Village, Vernacular, water runoff, wet, wraparound gallery

Adapting architecture to positively interact with its physical environment is always a challenge. But it is a challenge that usually produces regionally distinct results that transcend the problems posed by the environment. Here in Louisiana, our climate is very wet and muggy. So, how did generations past cope with all that water?

One of the subtle ways of forcing water to runoff vernacular and plantation structures (besides hipped roofs) was to build sloped galleries with other minor architectural details. Most Creole-style plantations (Destrehan Plantation, for instance) featured wraparound galleries that effectively guarded the main structure from the elements. The wraparound galleries were slightly sloped, about 1/8 inch a foot, to facilitate water runoff from the occasional water that did make its way on to the porch (we get a lot of sideways rain with strong winds down here).

Vernacular Creole and Cajun structures, however, did not feature wraparound galleries, instead featuring one main porch off the front of the house. The vernacular porches were also sloped – assisted water runoff was much more important on these small structures because a greater degree of water was able to get onto the porch.

But a sloped porch with increased water runoff caused more architectural issues. In these simple vernacular structures, just about every aspect of the building was made out of wood, usually cypress. The foundational piers underneath the house were the only architectural facet that used brick. As you can see in the picture above of the porch on Jazzy Jewels, the pillars and railings are made of wood, which are highly susceptible to rot due to the amount of water, temperature, and general climate (even if they are made of cypress). Thus, notches were cut into the bases of the pillars to reduce the surface area that came into contact with porch runoff. This also allowed the base of the piers to dry quicker. A similar cut was made in the rail support.

A little ingenuity goes a long way, especially when you’re fighting a never-ending battle against a harsh, destructive climate like Louisiana’s.