Fireplace Destroys Louisiana’s Historic Nottoway Plantation

White Citadel, Louisiana, Could 18, 2025 – A devastating hearth razed Nottoway Plantation, the most important remaining antebellum mansion within the U.S. South, on Thursday, Could 15, 2025, lowering the 166-year-old landmark to rubble. The blaze, which started round 2 p.m. within the south wing of the 53,000-square-foot mansion in Iberville Parish, unfold quickly, defying the efforts of practically a dozen hearth departments from surrounding areas, together with Baton Rouge, Plaquemine, and Donaldsonville. No accidents had been reported, and different buildings on the 31-acre property, such because the Randolph Ballroom and household cemetery, had been preserved.

The hearth, suspected to have originated in a second-floor bed room, probably resulting from {an electrical} subject, engulfed the cypress-wood construction, inflicting the roof to break down by 10 p.m. Regardless of being briefly contained, embers reignited, resulting in a complete lack of the primary home. The Louisiana State Fireplace Marshal’s Workplace is investigating the trigger, with officers noting the challenges of restricted water stress and a single hearth hydrant.

Inbuilt 1859 by John Hampden Randolph, a rich sugar planter who enslaved 155 folks, Nottoway was a Greek Revival and Italianate-style mansion famend for its white columns, hand-carved marble fireplaces, and three-story rotunda. Listed on the Nationwide Register of Historic Locations in 1980, it had remodeled into Nottoway Resort, a preferred venue for weddings, excursions, and occasions, drawing over 100,000 guests yearly earlier than 9/11. Iberville Parish President Chris Daigle referred to as it a “cornerstone of our tourism economic system” and a logo of the area’s complicated historical past, noting its evolution right into a “place of reflection, schooling, and dialogue” about its ties to slavery.

The destruction has sparked combined reactions. Some, like native resident Janean Webber, mourned the lack of a landmark that survived hurricanes solely to succumb to fireplace. Others, together with voices on X, expressed aid, viewing the plantation as a painful reminder of enslavement. One publish said, “The Nottoway Plantation—as soon as referred to as the ‘White Citadel’—has burned to the bottom. So I say this with full consciousness of the facility of fireside: It’s GOOD.” One other highlighted the positioning’s historical past, noting it was “constructed off the backs of over 150 enslaved Black individuals who had been owned, whipped, starved, raped, and labored to dying.”

Proprietor Dan Dyess expressed hope to rebuild, acknowledging the mansion’s twin position as an financial driver and a reminder of slavery’s brutal legacy. Nonetheless, opinions are divided on whether or not reconstruction ought to happen, with some advocating for a brand new method to memorializing the positioning’s historical past, as steered by The Descendants Challenge, which seeks to reframe plantation narratives. The lack of Nottoway, a fixture of Louisiana’s cultural and historic panorama, leaves open questions on the way to honor its complicated previous.