Before Kevin Kelly bought Houmas House in 2003, the River Road plantation had passed through six owners, each of whom had left a mark on the home. The previous owner’s “Federal” tastes, for instance, altered the home’s stylings, so Kelly began his transformative task by reappointing the house with elegant architectural touches like crown mouldings and colorful interiors. Kelly commissioned fine artist Craig Black to paint a gorgeous mural of a lush sugarcane landscape in the home’s central hallway.
The home’s interior collection features a large, extremely rare Louisiana Census map given to Colonel John Preston, a former owner of Houmas House. The map was hidden in the attic for more than 140 years. “The map showed the inventories of all the plantations along the river,” Kelly said. “They probably hid the map to keep it from falling into the hands of the Union Army.”
The furniture collection includes work by Mallard, Belter, Meeks, Lee, and McCracken as well as period artwork from Louisiana painters and others. The Houma people, an American Indian tribe, lived on the land where the Houmas House Plantation is located. Kelly’s porcelain collection includes several significant pieces of the Houma Indian queen adorned in a skirt of perique tobacco leaves. The Houma queen was commonly depicted in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century allegorical drawings, paintings, and sculptures for European audiences as the personification of America.
Don’t, and this is a big don’t, forget to pay special attention to the Bette Davis room. The cinema queen actually lived in Houmas House during the filming of the kitschy Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte, and there are several unique Hollywood items in the room.
Few fine home interior collections rival that of Houmas House, but where the River Road jewel really sparkles is the garden. “The gardens are just as important as the house,” Kelly said. “One of the reasons people come here again and again is because of the gardens.
“We have thirty-six acres and a tremendous diversity of gardens. Folks may wander about and enjoy the landscaping during the day but there is an entirely different quality to the grounds at night as well.”
The grounds feature a two hundred-year-old stately oak alley that leads to the river. Guests can stroll through the Hampton and Upper Garden or be soothed by the sprinkling water sounds provided by the Neptune Pavilion Fountain or Fountain Courtyard. Along the banks of the garden lagoons are wonderful stands of camellias, crape myrtles, roses, azaleas, irises and water lilies that are blooming at any given time. Upwards of sixty thousand vibrant annuals are installed every season. Eleven years after taking ownership of Houmas House, Kelly can say truly say of his estate, “I came, I saw, I planted.”
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