Visiting Butler Greenwood has always felt a bit like arriving at an enchanted kingdom. Turning off U.S. Highway 61 just north of St. Francisville, the traveler enters a grove of more than 100 live oaks, planted close enough that their sinuous limbs dapple the century-old stands of azaleas and camellias between highway and main house with flickering sunlight. Beneath the oaks, sunken gardens studded with classical statuary flank the approach to the rambling, English cottage-style home, which has stood, scarcely changed, since 1810. This is exactly as the current occupant and seventh-generation owner intends. “When your grandchildren are the ninth generation to have lived on the place, it gives you a feel for the continuity of history,” says Anne Butler, storyteller, historian, and author of 35 books, who has opened her ancestral home as a bed and breakfast for more than thirty years. “Gesturing to the live oaks shading the front of the property, Butler notes, “This is English landscaping. St. Francisville was part of English Louisiana. It’s not French Louisiana, not Cajun, not Creole. It wasn’t until the second-generation, Greek Revival houses that they started planting strictly aligned oak allées. So, it’s important that Butler Greenwood is appropriate to the area. In St. Francisville, we’re almost the last [B&B] like that—a place that helps you better understand the history of the area, and the importance of the landscape.”
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Dovecote Cottage at Butler Greenwood in St. Francisville
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The Pool Pavillion
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The Pond House
Today, visitors have the run of fifty acres of that atmospheric landscape—part of the original, 1500-acre Spanish land grant upon which the plantation was established in 1796. Guest accommodations are in one of eight free-standing cottages dotted around the grounds. Two of them—the Old Kitchen (c. 1796) and the Cook’s Cottage (1810)—date from the era of Butler Greenwood’s founding; others like The Gazebo, The Dovecote, and The Pool Pavilion are contemporary structures featuring luxury amenities—jacuzzis, working fireplaces, a swimming pool—and whimsical architectural flourishes such as the set of antique stained glass church windows that bathes guests at the six-sided Gazebo in colored morning light. Some cottages feature multiple bedrooms; all have private baths, full kitchens, porches or decks, barbecue grills, and wireless internet.
That formula—peace, privacy, and contemporary comfort amid a carefully conserved eighteenth century estate—keeps visitors coming back. “We have families that have been coming for three generations,” Butler said, noting that guests come to Butler Greenwood seeking different forms of escape. “Some come because Butler Greenwood is a refuge—from storms, from noise, from modernity, from additional fees,” she says. “Some come to recover when they’ve got cancer or have had surgery. And of course, some come simply for pleasure. Now, they’re coming back and bringing their grandchildren, too.” www.butlergreenwood.com
visitstfrancisvillela.com/stay to explore all the diverse accommodation options that St. Francisville and West Feliciana parish have to offer.
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