Photo by Molly C. McNeal
The Marguerite House in St. Gabriel, Louisiana, may be one of the oldest surviving buildings in the Mississippi River Valley.
Sid Gray claims he is not an academic. He prefers the term “old building” over “historic structure,” and he resists the authority implied by titles. Standing beside him at the Marguerite House in St. Gabriel, however, it becomes difficult to take him at his word.
Gray is, at once, a restoration specialist, architectural historian, and antiquarian. He graduated with a degree in architecture in 1971, though he never pursued licensure. Instead, he spent decades working across Louisiana and Mississippi, consulting on and restoring aging structures that most people pass without a second glance. For the last twenty-three years, one building in particular has occupied his attention: the Marguerite House—also known as “Home Place.” Nowadays it is part of the Chatsworth Plantation, an event venue and space.
Today, the house stands near the Mississippi River levee in St. Gabriel, though Gray is certain it has not always stood here. Held within the LeBlanc family for nearly two centuries, the building exists not as a fixed historical object, but as a survivor—moved, altered, and layered with time.
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Photo by Molly C. McNeal
Marguerite House, circa 1900
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Photo by Molly C. McNeal
Marguerite House today
To walk the Marguerite with Gray is not simply to tour a house. It is to read it. To understand the Marguerite House, Gray insists you begin with the land.
St. Gabriel was established in 1767 as a Spanish outpost, part of a colonial strategy to buffer British forces positioned nearby along the Mississippi corridor. That same year, 210 Acadian refugees—displaced by British expulsion—arrived in the region under Spanish authority. The following year, single Acadian men helped construct Fort St. Gabriel just south of today’s Bayou Manchac. The settlement that accumulated around the fort was not just a community, it was also a borderland: French-speaking Acadians and German Catholics living under Spanish rule, within reach of British territory and long-established Native American communities.
Gray frames the Marguerite House within this cultural geography. He suspects it may have originated within Fort Bute, the nearby British fortification, before being relocated to its present site. He notes that building movement was not unusual; nearby St. Gabriel Catholic Church was itself moved multiple times as the Mississippi River shifted course.
If this is true, the Marguerite is not merely a residence, it’s an artifact of the borderlands, too.
At Gray’s urging, sections of siding have been removed to expose the timber frame beneath. To most visitors, the surface might look rough or unfinished. To Gray, it is through these portals that the building speaks most clearly.
He points first to the pegs. They are one inch in diameter, evenly spaced at roughly eight-inch intervals—“a very unusual detail,” he notes. Their regularity suggests intention, yet their exact function remains unresolved. Blue tags nearby mark samples taken for dendrochronology to date the timber. However, ongoing dendrochronological efforts remain in limbo. But Gray is cautious. The roof has been replaced. Not every piece can be assumed to be original.
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Photo by Molly C. McNeal
The exposed walls reveal layers of bousillage made from mud and moss.
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Photo by Molly C. McNeal
The exposed walls reveal layers of bousillage made from mud and moss.
The wall itself reveals a layered construction: bousillage—mud packed between wooden members—and behind it, a refined three-coat plaster system. Scratch coat, brown coat, finish coat. But here, the scratch coat is not tool-marked. It is human.
The builder pressed his thumb into the plaster every few inches. Gray leans in: if you look closely, you can see the imprint of a thumbnail. It is a surprising detail. The presence of the builder remains, literally embedded in the wall.
A sealed window interrupts the wall. “A remodel,” Gray says. Nearby, he traces the outline of a former door: hinge marks, a worn threshold with wood rendered slightly concave by the passage of generations of feet. Another doorway is visible a few feet away.
The house, clearly, has not always been arranged as it is now; these tells are everywhere. The building has been opened, closed, expanded, and reconfigured over time. Doors have become walls. Circulation has shifted. Even the posts are telling. Nearly ten inches thick, they closely resemble those at nearby St. Gabriel Catholic Church—the oldest Catholic church in the Mississippi Valley and, in Gray’s words, an “outstanding example of professional carpentry.” The similarity leads him to a working hypothesis: the same builder may have constructed both.
That possibility alone sets the Marguerite apart from typical Acadian dwellings, which were often constructed quickly and with limited means.
Gray says the homeplace was mansion-like. Indeed, the interior feels, at first, like a large central room. But Gray directs a visitor’s attention downward. The floor reveals what walls no longer show. Rectangular depressions mark where vertical posts once stood. Entire partitions have been removed. He sketches the earlier layout verbally: three rooms across—two larger chambers and a smaller one that may have functioned as a service or utility space.
“By the end of the walkthrough, the Marguerite House feels less like a building and more like a mystery novel.”
At the center, the outline of a former chimney is visible in the floorboards. Originally it would have stood as a central hearth—an early characteristic common to French and Spanish colonial buildings before later Anglo-American influences favored end chimneys and symmetrical plans.
“You expect to see all creations and additions,” Gray says. Change, for him, is not damage—it is evidence.
On the second floor, the sense of time deepens further.
The floorboards have been sanded in recent decades, but traces of earlier craftsmanship remain. Some floorboards are pegged with wood rather than nailed—something Gray has never seen elsewhere. They are hand-sawn cypress, each subtly tapered to follow the natural shape of the tree. In places, you can measure the taper across a single plank. These were not standardized materials. Each required labor-intensive cutting, often done by two men using a pit saw.
Some boards have clearly been reused. Once flooring, now ceiling, they bear the marks of previous lives. Edges have been hacked to accommodate uneven thickness. Nothing here is uniform. Everything is negotiated and intentional.
Gray hypothesizes, quite convincingly, that the Marguerite House may be one of the oldest surviving buildings in the Mississippi River Valley. He bases this not on a single test or artifact, but on accumulation—construction methods, material details, comparisons to other known structures like St. Gabriel Church. He is less interested, however, in proving a title—though pinpointing potentially the oldest house in Louisiana would, understandably, be a fitting feather in Gray’s straw hat.
Photo by Molly C. McNeal
Architectural historian Sid Gray has been investigating the origins of the Marguerite House for twenty-three years and counting.
Yet, giving credence to labels like “the oldest house” does not concern him nearly as much as understanding how the building came to be—and what it reveals about the people who built, used, and altered it.
“They’re not all historic houses,” Gray insists. “But they are all old buildings. So that’s the term I prefer to use.”
This distinction shifts focus away from prestige and toward process—from static designation to lived experience.
It is perhaps fitting that Gray’s interest in old buildings began with something entirely modern: a geodesic dome a la Buckminster Fuller. Shortly after he had finished building a dome for a couple in Plaquemine Point, Gray was approached by a friend of the couple’s, who said, “ ‘Hey, I got an old house, you want to work?’ And I've been working with old buildings ever since.”
For over two decades, the Marguerite House has been his most persistent puzzle. He continues to document it, to expose parts of it, and to argue for its significance—not just as an isolated relic, but as part of a broader, understudied cultural landscape along this stretch of River Road.
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Photo by Molly C. McNeal
A paper model of Marguerite House
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Photo by Molly C. McNeal
By the end of the walkthrough, the Marguerite House feels less like a building and more like a mystery novel.
Doors that lead nowhere. A chimney that once stood at the center and now disappears. A thumbprint pressed into plaster two and a half centuries ago. Massive posts that echo those of a nearby church. Timber that may have been cut, hauled, and assembled by professional carpenters working under colonial authority.
And perhaps most intriguingly: a structure that may have been moved, twice or more, across a shifting river landscape shaped by cultural and political geography.
Sid Gray may deny being an academic, but in the Marguerite House, he has identified something scholars recognize well—a problem that resists closure. He continues, piece by piece, to try to fit it together. And he is, undoubtedly, the most knowledgeable on the subject.
