JIM BLANCHARD GALLERY.com

Original Art FOR SALE by Jim Blanchard

This drawing depicts Tezcuco in the mid 1800s, based on old photos, archival research, and family histories.  The ruins were measured, and the proprerty was surveyed to determine the scale for this drawing.

Hamilton Mercer Wright Mansion   $12,000 (FRAMED)    

Built in 1856 for Hamilton Mercer Wright (1816-1872) of Wright, Allen and Company, Cotton Factors.  The Italian Renaissance mansion is attributed to James Gallier, Jr., architect, and was built at a cost of $90,000.  The house and lot were purchased by Archbishop Placide Louis Chapelle in 1899.  The mansion was demolished in 1970.  The Cast Iron fence, made by Bennett & Lurges of New Orleans, is now located upriver at Houmas House Plantation & Gardens.  Today the lot remains empty. 

Framed Measurements
72" w x 39" h

Framed Measurements
55" w x 45" h

Tezcuco Plantation Home   $16,000 (FRAMED)    

Tezcuco was built for Benjamin Tureaud in 1855.  He was the grandson of Emanuel Bringier, and the son of Augustin Dominique Tureaud, both plantation owners.  The plantation remained in the Tureaud family until 1950.  Tezcuco burned in 2002, leaving only the beautiful gardens and towering chimneys among the ruins.

Framed Measurements
75" w x 49" h

Belle Grove Plantation Home   $26,000 (FRAMED)    

John Andrews (1771-, a wealthy sugar planter originally from Virginia, purchased the plantation in 1844.  Henry Howard, architect, designed the mansion and construction began in 1853 with completion in 1857.  Literally a palace in every detail, Belle Grove contained 55 rooms and was the center of a vast sugar plantation which included a private race-track and stables where fine horses were bred. It stood in a magnificent grove of magnolias, live oaks and pecans, and long festoons of gray moss blended with the bright green of palmetto palms. and the frail pink of the crepe myrtles that [framed] the entrance, but today its surroundings are singularly uninteresting and flat, an un-mowed and pasture-like field from which the house rises, abrupt and startling in an indifferent landscape bounded by the levee.  Morning Advocate – Sept. 20, 1936

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In 1867, John Andrews sold the plantation to Henry Ware for $50,000. James Ware acquired the estate in 1880 and once again, Belle Grove, became a showplace on River Road.  Mrs. Ware, Mary Eliza Stone Ware, travelled to New York and Europe to find and collect furnishing for the mansion, spending over $375,000.  The lavishness and beauty of Belle Grove became legendary.  In the 1920s, the plantation began to decline and the mansion was finally sold, as well as the furnishings, in 1925.  The house changed hands a few times, hoping for a restoration, and by the 1930 the mansion was falling into ruin.  The Historic American Buildings Survey measured and documented the ruined house in 1938.  On the night of March 17, 1952, the mansion was finally destroyed by fire.

Framed Measurements
75" w x 47" h

White Hall (La Maison Blanche)   $22,000 (FRAMED)    

White Hall was built for Marius Bringier in the 1780s.  In 1825, Wade Hampton purchased the mansion and began a major remodel to transform the mansion into a colonial revival columned home for his wife, Mary Cantey Hampton.  In 1829, he sold the home and then moved the craftspeople and workers to Houmas to enlarge the home there as he did to White Hall.  The mansion burned in the 1850s.  Nothing remains of the once stately estate. 

The year 1798 brought royalty. The Duc d'Orleans, later to become Louis Philippe, King of the French, arrived with his brothers, the Duc de Montpensier and the Comte de Beaujolais. After visits in and around New Orleans, the exiled trio was taken to White Hall. Cannons boomed; slaves raced to the house with the news that the vessel had been sighted. The family lined up for review with fellow planters, field and house servants, and an Indian chief, shod in beaver skin moccasins, wearing a mantle of the inner bark of an ash tree. A friendly ruler of the Houmas tribe, he was there to pay his respects to the fellow-leaders, even though the latter might be without followers at the moment. The princes did not omit a return call to the chief in his village. The visitors found Louisiana plantation life more princely than anything they had ever known: great halls, silks, laces and food--lucious snipe, delicate shrimp, enormous fish with flavor as rare as the host's wines.   Old Louisiana Plantation Homes – and Family Trees         

Louisiana Statehouse   $40,000 (FRAMED)    

The Old State Capitol

Louisiana’s Gothic Castle sits high atop a bluff in downtown Baton Rouge.

1847-1850 – Designed and built, James Dakin, Architect

1862 – Burned and left abandoned during the Civil War

1882 – Restoration and Enlargement, William Freret, Architect

1931 – Seat of Government moves to the new statehouse

1931 – The Statehouse becomes known as the Old State Capitol

1994 – becomes the Louisiana’s Old State Capitol, Center for Political and Governmental History    

Framed Measurements
70" w x 90" h

Framed Measurements
37" w x 37" h

The Houmas - Burnside Era   $12,000 (FRAMED)    

On a great curve of the Mississippi River and on high ground first selected by the Houmas Indians stand the great Tuscan columns of The Houmas.  The mighty Mississippi River gave birth to this land over the millennium, creating the fertile lands which became the great fields of Sugar Cane, Cotton, Corn, Indigo, tobacco and more.  The richness of the land, great forests of cypress, and the abundance of wildlife for hunting attracted settlers in the early 1700’s and eventually into the hands of the Great Sugar Barons in the early 1800’s.  In 1803 Donaldson and Scott built a new center hall cottage directly in front of the1700’s French House. In 1829, General Wade Hampton began the task of enlarging the Donaldson Cottage and transforming it into the Classical Revival Mansion that stands today.  For over 240 years, the Houmas Mansion has evolved and grew with the times and with the owners of the great mansion.   The great colonnade has not changed since 1829, when General Hampton set out to build a mansion fitting for his wife, Mary Cantey Hampton.

Framed Measurements
29" w x 35" h

French Quarter Courtyard   $4,500 (FRAMED)    

Tezcuco was built for Benjamin Tureaud in 1855.  He was the grandson of Emanuel Bringier, and the son of Augustin Dominique Tureaud, both plantation owners.  The plantation remained in the Tureaud family until 1950.  Tezcuco burned in 2002, leaving only the beautiful gardens and towering chimneys among the ruins.

Dominican College  $4,500 (FRAMED)    

Tezcuco was built for Benjamin Tureaud in 1855.  He was the grandson of Emanuel Bringier, and the son of Augustin Dominique Tureaud, both plantation owners.  The plantation remained in the Tureaud family until 1950.  Tezcuco burned in 2002, leaving only the beautiful gardens and towering chimneys among the ruins.

Framed Measurements
32" w x 30" h

Townhouse Floater  $2,400 (FRAMED)    

Tezcuco was built for Benjamin Tureaud in 1855.  He was the grandson of Emanuel Bringier, and the son of Augustin Dominique Tureaud, both plantation owners.  The plantation remained in the Tureaud family until 1950.  Tezcuco burned in 2002, leaving only the beautiful gardens and towering chimneys among the ruins.

Framed Measurements
36" w x 28" h

Framed Measurements
26" w x 34" h

Rev. John Bliss Warren Residence  $2,800 (FRAMED)    

John Bliss Warren, clergyman, educator, and journalist, was born in New England in 1800, and was instrumental in founding the Presbyterian church in Mobile, and the Louisiana Institute in New Orleans.  He also founded the New Orleans Protestant (1844-1846), a denominational weekly newspaper.  Rev. Warren purchased this half square from the New Orleans Canal and Banking Company to build a theological seminary.  The house on Maple Street was built in 1844 and attributed to James Dakin, architect.  Rev. Warren died on August 13th, 1845 and the property was bequeathed to the First Presbyterian Church.  Mrs. Warren regained possession of the house in 1853 and operated a school for girls there until 1862.

Framed Measurements
56" w x 44" h

Framed Measurements
56" w x 44" h

Madewood Plantation  $12,500 (FRAMED)    

Madewood Plantation, Bayou Lafourche

Colonel Thomas Pugh (1796-1852) enlisted noted architect, Henry Howard, to design and build his magnificent Greek Revival Mansion on Bayou Lafourche. Madewood’s construction began in 1844, and upon his death in 1848, his widow, Eliza Foley Pugh, completed the mansion. The Mansion was sold to the Marshall family in 1964. The painting shows Madewood with its original red sandstone painted façade.

Woodlawn Plantation  $12,500 (FRAMED)    

Woodlawn Plantation, Bayou Lafourche

 William Whitmell Pugh (1811-1906), purchased the Pierre Charlet Plantation (341 acres) in 1835.  He married Josephine Nicholls in 1844 and they lived in the old Charlet residence.  In the 1840’s, William Pugh enlisted architect Henry Howard to enlarge and redesign the old mansion.  The old mansion was raised and a new floor placed below along with Palladian wings to each side.  The central block of the mansion was refaced with the massive colonnade of four ionic fluted columns set between two square end columns.  In 1906, William Pugh died at Woodlawn and soon after the plantation was sold at sheriff’s auction.  After years of abandonment and decay, the famed Woodlawn was demolished in 1946.  Only the four marble capitals remain.

Framed Measurements
80" w x 50" h

Burnside Place  $15,000 (FRAMED)    

Burnside Place “The James Robb Mansion”, Garden District, New Orleans   

James Robb completed the Italianate Villa in the fashionable Garden District of New Orleans in 1855.  After a financial downfall he was forced to sell the estate to John Burnside in 1859 for $55,000.  John Burnside resided in the great villa, known then as Burnside Place, for 22 years until his death in 1881.  Oliver Beirne inherited the estate and then in 1890, his heirs sold the mansion and gardens to Newcomb College.  Sophie Newcomb College added the second floor to the mansion and occupied the estate until 1917.  The Baptist Theological Seminary occupied the estate from 1917-1954.  The mansion was demolished in 1955. 

All that remains today are a few granite steps and the brick and granite fence base along Washington Avenue.   The massive granite gate posts and urns, along with the gates and the cast-iron fence have been moved to the new campus of Baptist Seminary on the lakefront.

Campbell Mansion  $12,500            (39" w x 25" h)  

Dr. George Washington Campbell Residence, St. Charles Street, New Orleans

The Italianate Campbell Mansion was designed and built by Lewis E. Reynolds, a New York trained architect, and finished in 1859 at a cost of $40,000.  The Cast-Iron cornstalk fence surrounding the mansion was made by the Philadelphia’s Wood & Perot Foundry, and supplied by Wood and Miltenberger, New Orleans agents.  During the war, federal troops took possession of the Campbell mansion and put out Mrs. Campbell and her family.  U.S. General Benjamin “Spoons” Butler and his family occupied the mansion.  The mansion was sold after the Civil War and became the luxurious residence of Judge Henry Spofford.  The 50 year lease on the property expired in 1906 and the property reverted to the Poydras Home.  The neighborhood began to change.  The house became the Mansion Apartments, which housed the Chat and Chew Café, later known as the Hummingbird Café.  In 1965 the house was demolished to make way for a parking lot.  Only the rear carriage house remains on Julia Street.

Woodlawn (Indian Camp, Carville)  $12,000      (40" w x 25" h)  

Indian Camp Plantation “Woodllawn”, Iberville Parish

This property is known as Indian Camp Plantation and was an agglomeration of small Acadian homesteads bought by General Robert Camp.  The name Indian Camp is thought to have double reference: the site once held a Houma village, and the house remained in the Camp family until the latter part of the nineteenth century.  In 1859 he hired the famed New Orleans architect Henry Howard to design the raised brick Italianate mansion. 

Camp lost his property for the final time in 1874, and Indian Camp became a tenant farm under absentee ownership.  It was abandoned and in disrepair in the late nineteenth century, when a neighbor informed the board of control for the Louisiana Leper Home in New Orleans that the property could be leased.   The first paitents-5 men and 2 women- were dispatched here from New Orleans in November 1894.  Because neither steamboats nor trains would accept them as passengers, they were sent by coal barge at night.  They were housed in the former slave cabins, which were, according to contemporary reports, in better condition than the main house.  Two rooms in the main house were used for administrative offices.  Now part of the Gillis W. Long Center.   

Mt. Carmel Academy  $8,000          (29" w x 21" h)  

Tezcuco was built for Benjamin Tureaud in 1855.  He was the grandson of Emanuel Bringier, and the son of Augustin Dominique Tureaud, both plantation owners.  The plantation remained in the Tureaud family until 1950.  Tezcuco burned in 2002, leaving only the beautiful gardens and towering chimneys among the ruins.

Lemann Building  $10,000            (39" w x 22" h)  

Donaldsonville Louisiana

William Donaldson, a young merchant from New Orleans, and a member of the Louisiana Legislative Council, had a dream of building a town to be parish seat and the state capital.  In 1806, he purchased the 1775 Spanish Land grant of Pierre Landry, bordered by the Mississippi River and Bayou Lafourche, and commissioned Barthelemy Lafon (1769-1820), Creole architect and city planner, to draw a plan for La Ville de Donaldson.  Donaldson Town was formally dedicated on April 27th, 1806.  La Ville de Donaldson was incorporated on March 25th, 1813.  William Donaldson died in September 1813. 

In 1825, Donaldsonville was selected to become the “Capital City of the Commonwealth of Louisiana.”  The State House was completed, and the legislature meet there in 1830 and 1831, until they decided to move the seat of government to New Orleans. 

Donaldsonville was bombarded by Union forces, during the Civil War, in the summer of 1862.  After the Civil War, Donaldsonville became the largest black community in the state, and in 1868, elected Pierre Caliste Landry, a former slave, as the first African-American mayor in the United States. 

BERNARD LEMANN & BRO.  

Jacob Lemann (1809-1887), a peddler, who arrived from Germany, settled in Donaldsonville, and founded the business in 1836.  His sons Bernard and Myer Lemann took over the mercantile business, becoming “Bernard Lemann & Bro.”. 

On December 2nd, 1876, a destructive fire engulfed the block between Mississippi, Railroad, and Crescent Place.  The five buildings were destroyed.  The “Chief” of February 10th, 1877 reports:  “Mr. Bernard Lemann has purchased the two lots…which the buildings were recently burned…Mr. Lemann is having the debris removed from the lots preparatory to putting up an extensive brick building…” 

In June of 1877, large quantities of brick were hauled to the lots on Mississippi Street, and construction began on the new building designed by James Freret, architect.  By October 1877, the workmen were constructing the roof.  The new Italianate style building, “Bernard Lemann & Bros.”, opened on February __th, 1878. The store offered groceries, both retail and wholesale, men’s clothing, shoes, hats, and lingerie.  At Christmas time, the second floor hosted a Toyland. 

“Once the oldest family-operated department store in Louisiana”. 

The Lemann Store finally closed it’s doors in 1940’s.    

Lafourche Parish Courthouse  $12,000              (59" w x 28" h)  

Tezcuco was built for Benjamin Tureaud in 1855.  He was the grandson of Emanuel Bringier, and the son of Augustin Dominique Tureaud, both plantation owners.  The plantation remained in the Tureaud family until 1950.  Tezcuco burned in 2002, leaving only the beautiful gardens and towering chimneys among the ruins.

Bocage Plantation  $12,000            (39" w x 25" h)  

Bocage Plantation, River Road

Bocage, a wedding gift from Marius Pons Bringier to his eldest daughter, Francoise “Fanny” Bringier, the fourteen year old brief of Christophe Colomb, upon their wedding in 1801.  The original house was destroyed by fire and the present Bocage was built in 1837.  The mansion is attributed to James Dakin, architect

Acadia Plantation     $3,000            (24" w x 12" h)  

Tezcuco was built for Benjamin Tureaud in 1855.  He was the grandson of Emanuel Bringier, and the son of Augustin Dominique Tureaud, both plantation owners.  The plantation remained in the Tureaud family until 1950.  Tezcuco burned in 2002, leaving only the beautiful gardens and towering chimneys among the ruins.

Millwood Plantation  $12,500          (39" w x 27" h)  

Millwood Plantation, Richland County, South Carolina

Millwood, the home of Wade Hampton 11, was built in the early 1800s.  In 1838, Millwood was enlarged and remodeled in the Greek Revival style by Nathaniel Potter, architect from Rhode Island.  His plan added a wing on both sides and a two-story grand colonade in front of the mansion.  The renovations took two years.   Nathaniel Potter also designed Millford, for Susan Hampton, sister of Wade Hampton 11, and wife of John Manning.  The grand mansion, Millwood, was burned during the Civil War and all that remains are the remnants of the columns. 

Acadian Cottage  $800            (20" w x 11" h)  

Tezcuco was built for Benjamin Tureaud in 1855.  He was the grandson of Emanuel Bringier, and the son of Augustin Dominique Tureaud, both plantation owners.  The plantation remained in the Tureaud family until 1950.  Tezcuco burned in 2002, leaving only the beautiful gardens and towering chimneys among the ruins.

Rousseau - Melodia Plantation  $1,000           

(28" w x 12" h)  

Tezcuco was built for Benjamin Tureaud in 1855.  He was the grandson of Emanuel Bringier, and the son of Augustin Dominique Tureaud, both plantation owners.  The plantation remained in the Tureaud family until 1950.  Tezcuco burned in 2002, leaving only the beautiful gardens and towering chimneys among the ruins.

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 Availability and Pricing may change without notice.  Please contact Jim Blanchard for information on originals.....  garconierre@gmail.com