Live Oak Rising

How architect Trey Trahan is reimagining a Louisiana plantation as a place of reflection, restoration, and renewal

by

House & Home

When the property went up for sale, Trey Trahan was ready to bite. The founder and CEO of Trahan Architects had had his eye on the Live Oak plantation site in West Feliciana Parish for years. At first, it was Trahan’s passion for historic architecture and landscapes that led him to appreciate the beauty and intrigue of the site. Later, Trahan would realize Live Oak’s façade was only the tip of the iceberg of what it had to offer the world. 

The two-story house, its brick walls painted white, stands surrounded by 250 acres of fields, forests, and ravines shaped by sinuous waterways. In the five years since Trahan closed the deal on the property in 2020, this landscape has already undergone profound transformation. Native grasses sway in the open fields; light filters through the forest canopy, dappling an understory carefully stripped of invasive species.

Trahan’s initial interest in the Live Oak property was motivated by his longstanding passions for historic architecture and landscapes. Since the seventies, the site had been privately owned by Bert Turner, founder of Baton Rouge-based Turner Industries, and his wife, the philanthropist and preservationist Sue Turner; before that, Live Oak had been stewarded by the LeSassiers, who operated a post office onsite. The family most deeply associated with the property, though, was the Barrow clan. Among the first settlers of English descent to arrive in Louisiana, the Barrows traveled south from North Carolina in the 1790s and quickly established themselves as one of the most powerful families in the region. Today, Live Oak itself represents only a small slice of the property they controlled at the height of their affluence, which, by the mid-nineteenth century, encompassed several plantation properties, thousands of acres in Feliciana parish, and hundreds of enslaved individuals. 

When Trahan closed the deal on the Live Oak property in 2020, he intended to restore it for personal use  as a private country home. Scarcely had the ink dried when the gravity of becoming the owner of a former plantation site hit Trahan with full force. 

A few months later, the murder of George Floyd reignited calls for racial justice across the United States, and across society, a chorus of voices demanded a reckoning of cultural practices seen to perpetuate racism and systemic violence against African Americans. At the center of this distinct American moment, the plantation arose, more visible than ever, as a glaring symbol of our country’s original sins. It was at these sites where millions of enslaved African Americans had lived, endured cruelty and abuse at the hands of slaveowners, and died. A renewed sense of scrutiny challenged modern plantation sites, reducing the stories of their properties to narrow, romanticized portrayals of the lavish lifestyle of slaveowners, instead of acknowledging the broader, more complex histories of what they represented as places of enslavement, large-scale agriculture, and colonialism.  

[Read this: "A Reckoning at the Big House—Regional historians, tour guides, and descendants of the enslaved weigh in on the future of plantation tourism in Louisiana"]

These nationwide events, along with Trahan’s own passions for history and design,  ignited the idea that there was something more he could do at Live Oak.  How could Live Oak, and the echoes of all the diverse peoples who had walked its grounds, offer a thoughtful interpretation of the past and a space to cultivate conversations about the future?  

A renowned architect, Trahan began assembling a team of consultants, landscape architects, conservationists, and ethnobotanists, anthropologists, ethnographers, archaeologists, meadow specialists, and historians. “We started looking into the history of the site with a mind toward research and kind of uncovering the stories that lay there, but also healing,” said Margaret Jankowsky, Director of Urban Design at Trahan Architects, and the Project Manager for the Live Oak project. “That’s been something at the core from the very beginning, is how to approach this really tough and complicated history from a healing perspective.” Thus began a rigorous, yearslong process of research and investigation. 

“You have to be prepared, to—almost like archaeologists, in your exploration, whether it’s of site or building—you have to prepare yourself for the unknown and the unpredictable." —Trey Trahan 

“You have to be prepared, to—almost like archaeologists, in your exploration, whether it’s of site or building—you have to prepare yourself for the unknown and the unpredictable,” said Trahan. This slow, incremental research has yielded remarkable discoveries. Unlike many other plantation sites in Louisiana, which opened their doors to tourists and sold off land to support the properties in times of economic hardship, the historic core of the Live Oak homesite and its surrounding fields has never been broken up or commercialized on a large scale—its stories preserved in the land itself. 

“The more we learned of it, the more we looked at it more closely, the more we realized that it was an enormously significant place because of its integrity,” said Doug Reed, Principal Emeritus at the award-winning landscape architecture firm Reed Hilderbrand. 

Reed got a call from Trahan, an old friend and former collaborator, as soon as the Live Oak project was in motion. The landscape architects at Reed Hildebrand began an analysis of the landscape—the environmental conditions, the health of plants and soils—as well as an investigation into the site’s history. What geographic and plant forms survived from each historical period? What crops had been planted there? What could the natural world tell us about the lives lived on the plantation? “A primary consideration during early research was to understand the historic layout of the fields, home, allée, and general circulation, as well as how these features changed in various eras of use and ownership,” said Trahan. “Also its use and form during the Tunica era.” 

As this work was unfolding across Live Oak’s two hundred and fifty acres, Trahan’s team was also stripping back the walls of the old home. He hired Susan L. Buck, Ph.D., an art conservator and paint analyst, to conduct a paint analysis of the house. These investigations into the earliest paint coatings on the interior walls and woodwork revealed an unusually elaborate suite of decorative paintings. In her report on the study, Buck notes features that would have required a highly skilled painter to execute, including distinctive shades of Prussian blue and bright, glossy green made with the grainy, copper-based pigment, verdigris. In the middle of rural Louisiana, in the period between 1808 and 1820, the owners of Live Oak—and perhaps also the guests that they entertained—had the taste, the ambition, and the wealth to adorn the interior of their home with high art. “Unless you traveled or were well-read, you were not aware of paintings at this level,” Trahan said.  Faux decorative paintings from the same period were also found in a narrow closet behind the service stairs, likely the passage in the house most often used by enslaved people. 

The exterior walls also revealed information about the tastes and movements of the home’s former residents. Beneath the contemporary layers of white paint, the bricks were a vibrant red. The style resembled architectural forms at the University of Virginia, which Trahan’s team theorizes may have been the inspiration for Live Oak’s exterior. 

Trahan, and other members of the team, have been giddy with these discoveries. They echoed one another in asserting that Live Oak is a place of immense historical significance, a unique place, one that we have much to learn from. 

[Read this: "Who They Were—From fragments, Laura Plantation builds archives for individual slaves"] 

As the landscape architects proceeded with their investigation, they came across a sunken path, deep in the woods. Paths of this sort are familiar features in the Felicianas, and even beneath snarls of vegetation, they were able to identify the feature as an ancient Tunica trading trail. Shaped by centuries of footfall, the soft loess soils had been compressed to create a landform that passed right through the Live Oak property. The Tunica trail hints at a truth that the house alone cannot express—that the history of the property extends far beyond the period when it served as a plantation, that countless Indigenous tribes also inhabited these lands and left their imprint on the earth, too.

The trail also contributes to a broader question about how to read the mark of power on the landscape. “The story of it turning from part of the Tunica territory to a piece of land marked off and owned by a single person is a very different shift in mindset of what land is and who controls it,” said Jankowsky. 

Look to the home, for instance—at its exterior and interior, both of which demonstrate a concerted effort to showcase the power of its proprietors. The house is located on one of the highest points on the site, at a vantage from which its residents could survey the fields. From the front porch, a long path extends, framed by centuries-old live oaks from which the site likely takes its name. This double row of trees, called an “allée,” frames an impressive approach to the house, but also poses questions. Who was allowed to walk the allée? To this day, the walk holds different meanings, depending on one’s identity and ancestry. While some people might stroll beneath the oak branches and find the moment beautiful, others might experience the walk as an oppressive reminder of who was permitted to shape this landscape, and who was not; who had the power to dictate how it was used, and by whom. 

Material reminders of the lives of those enslaved at Live Oak are preserved in the property, too. Dr. John Bardes, assistant professor in the department of history at Louisiana State University, and a group of students have been working with Trahan’s team to detail the site’s record of slave ownership, understand what daily life was like at Live Oak, and catalogue the names of people enslaved there. They’ve done this using archival documents that include diaries, tax records, and census records. Using evidence from the 1870 and 1880 censuses and area freedman’s contracts, the research team concluded that the entire enslaved population likely fled or were displaced from Live Oak after the Civil War. This was highly unusual: in most cases across Louisiana, formerly enslaved individuals did not have the means to travel far after emancipation and tended to settle nearby or to continue working for their former enslavers as sharecroppers.

The era during which Live Oak was a place of enslavement is a focal point for the restoration work Trahan and his colleagues are undertaking, referring to 1808–1810, when the house was first built, as a “period of significance.” For the team, this period represents the most important and evocative time in Live Oak’s history. This process of stripping-back to a specific moment in the past is visible in the work undertaken thus far: red bricks emerging from the chipped-away white paint of the house’s exterior walls, the stands of longleaf pines that Trahan ordered to be removed because they had been imposed on the landscape in recent years. 

"Why doesn’t a place like this deserve to have another life, and evolve past what it is? It’s not forgetting the history, but it’s allowing it to move forward in a positive way.” —Margaret Jankowsky, Director of Urban Design at Trahan Architects, and the Project Manager for the Live Oak project

From the beginning, the preservation efforts at Live Oak were motivated not only by a desire to uncover history, but also in hopes of offering a healing place in the present. To help carve out the best path forward, the team has turned to individuals with a familial connection to the property, hosting a series of healing and research gatherings, in which descendants of people enslaved on Live Oak and other sites have been invited to participate. The team hopes such events will be an ongoing partnership with the community around Live Oak: offering a place where descendants of those who have ties to the property, or even those who simply recognize the site as an emotional and powerful fixture of ancestors’ experience in West Feliciana, can come together. “One thing we heard from a lot of descendants was just having access to their genealogy and learning where their ancestors were can be really important to them and very healing as well,” said Jankowsky.

While opening the site to descendants has allowed the team to envision a path toward this healing for individuals with direct ties to the land, the team also developed a conviction that this goal could be infused more powerfully into the landscape itself—a conviction which has sometimes overruled the objective of preserving a single period of significance at Live Oak.

Initially, the landscape architects considered planting indigo in the nearly one hundred acres of open fields as a way of illustrating what made the site an agricultural plantation. As work progressed, though, they began to focus on an objective both more difficult and compelling: to convert the fields into native Southeast Louisiana prairie. They’d reenvision the land, instead, as a symbol of rebirth.

“And given what we learned about Live Oak, and how high the integrity of the place is, and the palpable authenticity that it has, we determined that we should have an evocative place—one that’s determined by evocation and not by didactic means.” —Trey Trahan

Today, Live Oak is in its third year of planting four to five pounds of seeds of native grasses per acre. The seeds’ roots plunge five to fifteen feet deep, setting off a chain reaction of ecological renewal, combating erosion, encouraging water purification and filtration, as well as carbon sequestration in the soil. The team of landscape architects, meadow specialists, and site management crews are working to remove invasive species that have since come to dominate the ecosystem and stifle biodiversity. Trahan spoke animatedly about the results of this cultivation, describing native prairies teeming with life, alive with hundreds of species of beneficial insects, including important pollinators such as bees and butterflies. 

In the forests, too, the team has worked to remove invasives with the goal of restoring historical integrity and healing the landscape. Light comes through the canopies differently now, and new life blossoms on the forest floor. 

This transformation of the landscape into a thriving ecosystem infused with natural beauty encompasses, in many ways, the convergence of the Live Oak project's goals. The native prairie is symbolic of new beginnings. “It’s not just for visual effect. It’s changing the composition of the soil. It’s changing what plants and animals can thrive there,” said Lydia Gikas Cook, Senior Associate at Reed Hilderbrand and a Louisiana native working on the Live Oak project. “And, you know, why doesn’t a place like this deserve to have another life, and evolve past what it is? It’s not forgetting the history, but it’s allowing it to move forward in a positive way.” 

Aside from healing the land itself, the team is hopeful that this ecological renewal will present a setting in which people of different backgrounds might come together and have productive conversations about what this shared history means to them. 

Although Trahan intends for the site to be open for periodic public access at some point in the future, the project is still in a relatively early stage of research and development. Trahan has set up a Live Oak Foundation which in the future will develop programming on the site; he intends to assemble a team with expertise in anthropology, history, ethnography, and healing to guide this process. 

He knows some things for sure: Live Oak is unlikely to ever have anything like museum informational panels, or signs telling visitors where to go. The volume of guests will be limited to preserve the serenity and contemplative experience of the secluded grounds. 

“Most plantations that I visited—and this isn’t a criticism—are more didactic in their approach,” said Reed. “And given what we learned about Live Oak, and how high the integrity of the place is, and the palpable authenticity that it has, we determined that we should have an evocative place—one that’s determined by evocation and not by didactic means.”

Ultimately, Trahan hopes to offer a new way to experience a plantation site in Louisiana. He doesn’t want to tell people how they should feel about the deeply complex history that it represents. For him and his team, the Live Oak project has been a profound experience of discovery that has allowed them to see the place, and the history it holds, with fresh eyes, a process guided by curiosity, learning, and openness. Perhaps here, walking through fields humming with butterflies or following a sun-dappled Tunica trail, visitors will be able to imagine not only the past, but the future, too.