The Effect of Slavery on Plantation Architecture in New Orleans: Role of Louisiana Purchase

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Question: How did slavery effect architecture of plantation housing in/around New Orleans?

Architecture in and around New Orleans is unique in North America. It is rooted and developed from the French Colonial Period and later influenced by Spain, Africa, the Caribbean, Germany, Ireland, Italy, and the U.S. The city and its cultures created a melting pot of cultures. “To understand New Orleans architecture is to begin to understand the city itself, for the buildings a culture erects are an expression of that culture’s history, values, and tastes. Man’s dreams, aspirations, and techniques for survival are all clearly reflected in the buildings he leaves behind, from the most utilitarian to the most lavish.”[footnoteRef:1] The early culture of Louisiana had a determinative impact on the building types and interior design of the plantation society from 1700-1865. The introduction of slavery was a component of the culture that was brought to Louisiana. Slaves unwillingly inhabited a lifestyle completely different from the French, Spanish, and Americans. Their lifestyle undoubtedly had an influence on the succeeding architecture and landscape of Plantations in New Orleans. [1: Vogt, Lloyd. 1985. New Orleans Houses : A House-Watcher’s Guide. Pelican Pub. Co., p. 13]

In the early 1700s, there were very few slaves in Louisiana and those that did exist were Native Americans. Louisiana was under French rule from 1699 -1763 after taking it from the Spanish in 1710, during the reign of King Louis XIV. During the early years under French rule, they raided a colony of Native Americans, killing thousands and taking some as slaves. After, the French created African chattel slavery.[footnoteRef:2] They imported a few thousand Africans to New Orleans to be sold and purchased as slaves. The goal of this decision was to boost the plantation economy occurring in southern Louisiana. This area was primarily farming land. Soon, that land would be labored by African slaves. [2: African chattel slavery was the importation of African people to be sold as slaves in the Americas]

The slaves in Louisiana were treated similar to those of France. The treatment of slaves was set in place by the “Code Noir.”[footnoteRef:3] This code regulated the rights and actions the slaves were entitled and the treatment of slaves by their master. [3: The Code Noir was a decree originally passed by France’s King Louis XIV in 1685. The Code Noir defined the conditions of slavery in the French colonial empire, restricted the activities of free Negroes, forbade the exercise of any religion other than Roman Catholicism, and ordered all Jews out of France’s colonies.]

“Slaves are forbidden to carry arms except those who are employed by their master in hunting. Slaves of different masters are not to gather together, by day or night, under pretence of weddings or otherwise. Either at the place of one of the masters or in the highway or distant places, on penalty of corporal punishment, the lash and the brand. On repetition of the offence, death may be awarded at the discretion of the judges. Masters convicted of permitting such meetings must compensate their neighbors for all damage suffered and pay a fine of ten crowns, the fine to be doubled for a second offence.”[footnoteRef:4] [4: An example of laws from the Code Noir. See William Renwick Riddell. ‘Le Code Noir.’ The Journal of Negro History 10, no. 3 (1925)]

Interestingly, masters could be punished for treating a slave more fairly than written in the Code Noir. These were laws set in place that had to be followed by the masters and the slaves. If the laws were broken, both faced punishments.

Regaining control of Louisiana in 1763, Spain set in motion a law to ban Native American slave trade but continued to allow African slave trade. A new law called “coartación” was set in place to give slaves a chance of freedom[footnoteRef:5]. Spain ruled Louisiana only for 30 years until France regained control, which eventually leads to the Louisiana Purchase.[footnoteRef:6] [5: This law allowed slaves to have rights such as owning land.] [6: The Louisiana Purchase was the acquisition of the Louisiana territory of New France by the United States from France in 1803.]

The French colonists who established a settlement westward of the Mississippi River, which would eventually become New Orleans, planned to create a town with a symmetrical plan. Engineer, Pierre Leblond de la Tour create the original design for the town. He designed it around a central square with a wall enclosing the site and plantations were to be built just beyond the limits. Once the colonists learned more about the soil deposit caused by the Mississippi River, they had to look further into the design of the city. Due to the conditions, the city was expanded to other areas where the building site could withstand the topographical conditions. “The planters in these outlying areas soon began to build French Colonial plantation houses, which suited their way of life and responded to the environmental conditions they faced – constant threat of flooding; the damp, soft soils; and the hot, humid summers.”[footnoteRef:7] The location of the plantations, perpendicular to the Mississippi River, were situated in relation to river to allow easy access to ship goods that were farmed on those lands. [7: Quoted in Vogt, p. 30]

In the early 1700s, plantation owners were poor southern farmers. They did not own slaves and did all the farming work themselves. The housing on the plantation was basic and utilitarian, as the farmers were relatively poor. Vlach explains them to be ‘tumbledown dwellings.’[footnoteRef:8] These structures consisted of heavy timber wood frames built on wood sills. The sides were covered by boards and the roofs were steep pitched with wood shingles. Some of the better dwellings had windows were finished with paint on the exterior. The house contained a wooden chimney that was faced with clay on the interior to prevent fires. [8: Quoted in Vlach, John Michael. 1993. Back of the Big House : The Architecture of Plantation Slavery. The Fred W. Morrison Series in Southern Studies. University of North Carolina Press, p. 2]

The landscape of the early 17th century plantations generally consisted of badly kept farming land. It seemed that the farmers did not care to keep well groomed fields for the crops. In the book, Back of the Big House, Vlach provides a description of the common condition of the plantation land:

“Generally, a common planter’s fields were haphazardly tended; crops were raised in odd-shaped plots scattered about his holding. Hills of tobacco and corn were scratched up with hoes between dead trees and the remnants of charred stumps, while livestock forged freely, without supervision, across unfenced woodlands, marshes, and pastures. Ground that was worn out by too many seasons of planting a single crop was allowed to grow up to briars and bushes.”[footnoteRef:9] [9: Quoted in Vlach, p. 2]

With the introduction of slavery to New Orleans in the early 1700s, plantation farmers began to buy the slaves to work the fields. The design of the plantation had to adapt to the new addition of slaves. In “Cabin, Quarter, Plantation: Architecture and Landscapes of North American Slavery,” the authors discuss two different spatial systems in relation to the big house and the slave quarters. These two types are Patriarchal Group and Detached Group.[footnoteRef:10] A typical plantation consisted of about twenty slaves, some of which had families. The slave quarters were often located far away from the location of the master’s house. Typical plantation houses were located on the highest elevation of the property. This expressed the idea of social status between the master and the slaves. Also, the placement of the master’s house prevented it from becoming flooded by the Mississippi River. Because of this spatial division, slaves had the opportunity to have some type of control over their private life beyond their life under the master’s control, or as Vlach phrases it, “beyond their master’s immediate scrutiny, at the margins of the plantation and in the thickets beyond its boundary lines.”[footnoteRef:11] [10: Ellis, Clifton, and Rebecca Ginsburg. 2010. Cabin, Quarter, Plantation : Architecture and Landscapes of North American Slavery. Yale University Press, p. 21-25] [11: Quoted in Vlach, p. 13]

Slaves developed an area to live not only in the architecture of the plantation, but also in the landscape of the property. Vlach stated, “The creation of slave landscapes was one of the strategies employed by blacks to make slavery survivable.”[footnoteRef:12] Beyond the boundary lines, in the ‘gray areas’, slaves created their own landscape through pathways and trails. These pathways created, led to places that other activities, other than slave work, occurred; gathering areas for religious meetings or parties, shortcuts to hideouts or other plantations, or paths to nearby sources of water.[footnoteRef:13] Fugitive slaves and patrols who regularly traveled these paths, creating an intricate plan of connections, all had an effect on the landscape in and around New Orleans. The development of slave landscapes “were improvisational responses to the given landscape rules of white masters.”[footnoteRef:14] This overlooked world of landscapes provided slaves with the sense of ‘escape.’ [12: Quoted in Vlach, p. 1] [13: Vlach, p. 13] [14: Quoted in Vlach, p. 13]

In the earlier years of slavery, slave housing was located near the master’s house. This type of slave home was known as the “”Patriarchal Group.”[footnoteRef:15] Their housing consisted of log cabins but were no less accommodating than that of the master’s.[footnoteRef:16] In this circumstance, although they were referred to as master and slaves, they were considered to be relatively equal. The living quality of slaves was far preferable than future slave housing. This was due to the smaller quantity of slaves in the area. Once the slave population became more substantial, those living qualities regressed. The transition from the “Patriarchal Group” slave home to the “Detached Group” slave home began to occur.[footnoteRef:17] Slave/master housing developed into a more hierarchical design. The idea of the master having more power over slaves occurred more frequently. The master’s house became bigger and more accommodating, compared to slave quarters. The slave housing consisted of a cluster of small, one room log cabins that were located close to the master’s house. Each cabin was constructed with wood and, sometimes, brick or clay. Inside the cabin, wood panels lined the walls and the floor was dirt. The slaves either slept on the dirt floor or they had a wood platform as a bed. [15: Ellis, Clifton, and Rebecca Ginsburg, p.21-25] [16: Ellis, Clifton, and Rebecca Ginsburg, p.21-25] [17: Ellis and Ginsburg, p.21-25]

Completely transitioning into the “Detached Group” type of slave housing, slaves now had no degree of freedom.[footnoteRef:18] Slaves were looked down upon as disgusting, barbaric beings. A social ladder developed when master’s allowed slaves to become house-servants.[footnoteRef:19] The more favored slaves became the house servants and lived in the house or in a separate building right next to the house. The placement of certain servant quarters became more centered around the process of slave engagement and productivity. Vlach writes about a master mixing “the quarters for his house slaves in among different services structures that were gathered together next to his mansion, treating them essentially as workplaces where the personal lives and the domestic chores of his servants merged into one seamless experience.”[footnoteRef:20] But this area was only meant for the 6 or 7 house servants. The rest of the slaves 20+ were considered field slaves and they were the ones at the bottom of the social ladder. Those slaves lived in quarters that were located on the plantation but placed out of sight of the master’s house or ‘Big House.’ Their conditions were materially much worse than the slaves that lived in the master’s house. But they had better access to the slave landscape of limited freedom away from the master’s overseeing eye. [18: Ellis and Ginsburg, p.21-25] [19: Ellis and Ginsburg, p.21-25] [20: Quoted in Vlach, p. 21]

Plantations were being bought by wealthier people, instead of poor farmers. The main house made a complete transformation from tumbledown dwellings with ungroomed fields to big, elegant houses with beautifully tended landscape. This change transpired from John Law’s[footnoteRef:21] goal of creating a better economy in the south by introducing slavery to plantations. The rich began investing in plantations and slavery, which had a direct effect on the architecture of the plantations in the south. Once the wealthy began to buy/build plantations, the architecture and design of the main plantation house went through dramatic transformations. As for the slave quarters, the quality of living the space offered, only got worse due to the addition of more slaves. [21: An economist who was appointed Controller General of Finances of France under the Duke of Orleans]

During the course of 160 years, the transformation of the plantation house was indirectly affected by slave importation. Before slavery, the plantation house was a single room, timber dwelling. It was in no way ‘lavish.’ Poor farmers owned and cultivated the plantations. With the introduction of slavery, the house slowly transitioned into a larger house with additional rooms. The owners started becoming those of wealth. As slavery became more populous, the wealthy saw a way to make investments through slavery and plantations. Once they came into the picture, the design of the plantation house forever changed. What used to be a tumbledown dwelling was now a mansion. The one room house transitioned into a two-story mansion with three rooms positioned side by side on each floor.[footnoteRef:22] All the rooms in the mansion had beautiful French doors that opened to a gallery at the front of the house.[footnoteRef:23] The gallery was used to address or overlook the slaves. This is the type of house that most people associate with plantation houses. [22: Vogt, 15] [23: Vogt, 15]

Today, when you mention a plantation house in the south, the average person would not picture a small shack, that looked like it was going to fall apart, with overgrown landscape. They would, likely, picture a mansion with front balconies on both floors, intricately designed floral railings with French doors leading out to the balcony, and beautiful trees bordering the straight path leading up to the front of the mansion. This style of plantation house arose because of slavery. It is important to understand the effect slavery had on the architecture and design of planation housing in Louisiana. Although slavery was an unjust and inhumane occurrence, it fueled the design and development of plantations that are still being studied, toured, photographed, etc. in the current world. People are more and more interested in slavery. Through touring and studying plantations in and around New Orleans, people can learn more about the past lives of slaves just by understanding the architecture and landscape that surrounds them.

Works Cited

Bruce, Curt. 1977. The Great Houses of New Orleans.
Ellis, Clifton, and Rebecca Ginsburg. 2010. Cabin, Quarter, Plantation : Architecture and Landscapes of North American Slavery. Yale University Press.
Orser, Charles E. ‘Archaeological Approaches to New World Plantation Slavery.’ Archaeological Method and Theory 2 (1990): 111-54.
Vlach, John Michael. 1993. Back of the Big House : The Architecture of Plantation Slavery. The Fred W. Morrison Series in Southern Studies. University of North Carolina Press.
Vogt, Lloyd. 1985. New Orleans Houses : A House-Watcher’s Guide. Pelican Pub. Co.
William Renwick Riddell. ‘Le Code Noir.’ The Journal of Negro History 10, no. 3 (1925): 321-29.
Wilson, Samuel. ‘The Plantation of the Company of the Indies.’ Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association 31, no. 2 (1990): 161-91.

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The Effect of Slavery on Plantation Architecture in New Orleans: Role of Louisiana Purchase

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