Robert W. Tebbs, Photographer to Architects: Louisiana Plantations in 1926

168 Pages·2011·81.6 MB·English

by  Richard Anthony Lewis

r ob e r t w. t e b b s
PHOTOGRAPHER TO ARCHITECTS
Belle Grove Plantation (interior with Corinthian columns), gelatin silver print,
Louisiana State Museum, 1956.087.026
r o b e r t w. t e b b s
P H O T O G R A P H E R T O A R C H I T E C T S
louisiana plantations in 1926
richard anthony lewis
foreword by robert j. cangelosi, jr.
LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS BATON ROUGE
This publication is supported in part by a grant from the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities,
State Affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Published by Louisiana State University Press
Copyright © 2011 by Louisiana State University Press
All rights reserved
Manufactured in China
First printing
designer: Michelle A. Neustrom
typeface: Chaparral Pro
printer and binder: Imago
library ofcongress cataloging-in-publication data
Lewis, Richard Anthony, 1963–
Robert W. Tebbs, photographer to architects : Louisiana plantations in 1926 / Richard Anthony
Lewis ; foreword by Robert J. Cangelosi, Jr.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8071-4218-9 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8071-4219-6 (pdf) — ISBN 978-0-8071-
4220-2 (epub) — ISBN 978-0-8071-4221-9 (mobi)
1. Architectural photography—Louisiana. 2. Plantations—Louisiana—Pictorial works. 3. Tebbs,
Robert W., 1875–1945. I. Title.
TR659.L49 2012
779'.9728809763—dc23
2011015345
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee
on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. (cid:2)(cid:2)
For Betty & Richard, and Jae-Hwa
Belle Grove Plantation (front entrance), vintage gelatin silver print,
Louisiana State Museum, 1956.087.021
con ten ts
foreword,by Robert J. Cangelosi, Jr. ix
acknowledgments xiii
introduction: Representing Louisiana Plantations, 1926 1
photographs of louisiana plantation houses
Elmwood Plantation 29 Magnolia Ridge Plantation 81
Parlange Plantation 31 Calumet Plantation 83
Voisin Plantation 33 Chrétien Point Plantation 85
Homeland Plantation 35 Shadows-on-the-Teche 87
Ormond Plantation 37 René Beauregard House 89
Labatut Plantation 39 Wakefield Plantation 91
Whitney Plantation 41 Rosedown Plantation 93
Evergreen Plantation 43 Welham Plantation 95
The Cottage Plantation 45 Seven Oaks Plantation 97
Houmas House/Burnside Plantation 47 Woodlawn Plantation 99
Oakley Plantation 49 Oak Alley Plantation 101
Three Oaks Plantation 51 Marston House 103
Glendale Plantation 53 Brame House 105
The Shades 55 Rienzi Plantation 107
Old Hickory Plantation 57 Ashland/Belle Helene Plantation 109
Butler-Greenwood Plantation 59 Madewood Plantation 111
Hickory Hill Plantation 61 Ramsey Plantation 113
L’Hermitage (Hermitage Plantation) 63 Bagatelle Plantation 115
Asphodel Plantation 65 Uncle Sam Plantation 117
Pleasant View Plantation 67 Belle Alliance Plantation 119
Waverly Plantation 69 Mount Airy Plantation 121
Ellerslie Plantation 71 Belmont Plantation 123
Live Oak (or Live Oaks) Plantation 73 Angelina Plantation 125
Hurst-Stauffer House 75 Goodwood Plantation 127
Greenwood Plantation 77 Belle Grove Plantation 129
Belle Chasse Plantation 79 Avery Island Plantation 131
vii
appendix: The Robert W. Tebbs Collection at the Louisiana State Museum 133
notes 135
selected bibliography 141
index 145
viii contents
for ewor d
It was 1926, and New Orleans jazz was all the rage. Louis Armstrong had ing 372. The category 4 storm crossed Florida, entered the Gulf of Mexico,
his Hot Five, Jelly Roll Morton had the Red Hot Peppers, and King Oliver, stalled below Pensacola, and then ravaged Mississippi and Louisiana on
the Creole Jazz Band. Women called flappers sported calf-length dresses September 21.
and short “Eton crop” hairstyles. Prohibition was in effect, and in New Also in 1926, photographer Robert Tebbs made a tour of southeast
Orleans, the Absinthe House was closed by court injunction for violation Louisiana, accompanied by his wife Jeanne and architect Richard Koch,
of the Volstead Act. Louisiana governor Henry Fuqua died in office on documenting its architectural history. At fifty-one, Tebbs was established
October 11 and was succeeded by Lieutenant Governor Oramel H. Simp- in his photography career, while Koch, at age thirty-seven, was only in his
son. During his tenure, Fuqua, who had defeated Huey Pierce Long for tenth year as partner in his architectural firm of Armstrong and Koch.
the state’s top office, worked to suppress activities of the Ku Klux Klan by As early as 1924, Koch had commissioned Tebbs to photograph his firm’s
outlawing masking, and approved the contract for the first bridge across projects in Natchez, Mississippi, and the following year, in both New
Lake Pontchartrain. Orleans and Natchez. These excursions were undertaken in connection
In 1926, the present campus of Louisiana State University in Baton with the ill-fated Octagon Library project that was to have been pub-
Rouge was dedicated; Lake Charles completed a waterway establishing it lished by the Press of the American Institute of Architects. With Koch
as a gulf port; Louisiana’s first public airport was built in Mansfield; and guiding the Tebbses, the three toured and documented the eighteenth-
the Pelicans, the state’s minor league baseball team, won the Southern and nineteenth-century rural homes of Louisiana, recording, even for
Association’s pennant. then, a bygone era. Tebbs focused on the architecture and architectural
New Orleans mayor Martin Behrman died in office on January 12, details, apparently with little interest in laborers, animals, and crops. His
1926, after serving seventeen years; Tulane Stadium, later known as photographs record the 1920s appearance of historic houses now lost, as
Sugar Bowl Stadium, was built Uptown; the Double Dealer, an influen- well as those that survive.
tial literary magazine in its sixth and final year of publication, offered a The photographic documentation by Tebbs of the historic architecture
national medium for southern writers; the New Orleans Arts and Crafts of southeast Louisiana was part of an ongoing national movement to
Club provided local artists a venue for their work; and the Louisiana record America’s architectural heritage—in particular Federal and Greek
chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) began work on spe- Revival buildings that are often erroneously called Colonial—through
cial preservation zoning for the Vieux Carré. photographs and measured drawings. The movement had inspired an
The weather in 1926 was not the best. In August, persistent heavy architectural revival that gained speed after the country’s centennial cel-
rains began to fall across the Mississippi Valley, including Louisiana, and ebration in 1876. As early as 1869, at the AIA national convention, Rich-
continued until spring, culminating in the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 ard Upjohn suggested that architects “make careful studies of some of
that left 300,000 people homeless in Louisiana alone. In August 1926, the old houses yet remaining” in order to “gain a valuable lesson.” For
a hurricane with 120-mile-per-hour winds struck southeast Louisiana, the centennial celebration in Philadelphia, architect Donald Mitchell sug-
near Houma. New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Lutcher, Garyville, Burnside, gested that Louisiana reproduce for its state exhibition building an old
Geismar, Hammond, and Ponchatoula all sustained heavy damage fol- New Orleans–style structure with a wraparound gallery such as the one
lowing the fifteen-foot tidal surge that smashed into Terrebonne Parish, he had illustrated in his 1867 book Rural Studies. Except for isolated re-
causing twenty-five deaths and millions of dollars in property damage as gional efforts, the interest in America’s architecture was centered on the
far north as Shreveport. The next month, the Great Miami Hurricane hit Atlantic seaboard, especially New England; however, other areas of the
Louisiana, having initially made landfall in Miami on September 18, kill- country quickly realized that their heritage was different.
ix