Nottoway restored into an antebellum showplace

• By CYNTHIA V. CAMPBELL
• Travel editor
• Published: Apr 12, 2009

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WHITE CASTLE — Nottoway, the largest remaining antebellum mansion in the southern United States, stands undaunted. Stately and spectacular, the plantation house has re-opened to the public following a multi-million-dollar renovation.

Touring the house, it felt as if the original owners, John Hampden Randolph and his wife Emily Jane Liddell Randolph, were watching over our shoulders, nodding their approval of the modern technology used to update their 19th-century home. Careful thought and skilled workmanship have turned the house into the showplace it always was meant to be.

Dale Huval, general manager, said prior to Hurricane Katrina, Nottoway was primarily in the tour bus business and a bed-and-breakfast inn, giving tourists a taste of the Old South. The property’s current owner is Paul Ramsay of Australia. Ramsay is a major stakeholder in a private hospital, elder care-facilities and Prime Television, an Australian television network. Ramsay has decided to develop Nottoway as a unique Southern hospitality business by using the presence of Old South charm to develop a contemporary resort.

“Paul is committed to the place, its look, its feel and the whole way we approach doing things. We have an entire new team in place,” said Huval.

The restoration is the work of numerous people. Johnny Waycaster of Natchez, an LSU graduate, is the restoration architect for the project. The Lemoine Companies of Lafayette and Baton Rouge is the main contractor. Landscape architect Michael Cullen, owner of Land Architecture, LLC, in Lafayette and a native of Baton Rouge, redesigned the grounds of Nottoway. Cullen’s work won the Baton Rouge Growth Coalition’s 2009 Good Growth Award.

For those who have toured Nottoway in the past, the house appears much the same. After all, it’s always remarkable what a new coat of paint will do. However, the restoration goes far beyond that.

People start their tour at the updated Visitor’s Center and Gift Shop. An addition to the building includes a business center created for people planning conferences or special events, such as weddings. The room, with soft robin’s egg blue walls accented with a white camellia frieze, has a large bay of windows with a great view of the lawn, new circular fountain and the castle-like plantation home.

A new paved pathway, lined by old-fashioned lamplights, leads to the house past the large fountain surrounded by seasonal flowers. Special underground wiring was laid so as not to disturb the roots of ancient oak trees. The trees are illuminated at night.

“Thanks to Hurricane Gustav, we have a new roof,” said Huval. All the shutters were removed and repainted a deep green and much of the hardware was replaced. Window air-conditioners were removed and replaced with a contemporary heat, air-conditioning and humidifier system. Climbing the home’s sturdy granite steps at the entrance, we learned all the original stairs and ornamental iron railings were restored and repainted.

The house’s pristine coat of white paint and white interiors are not a 20th-century whim. In her book The White Castle of Louisiana, a collection of vignettes published in 1903, Cornelia Randolph, one of the Randolphs’ daughters, described the house. “The walls were white all over the house, done in plaster, as smooth as satin; the frieze, wrought in designs of flowers and arabesque done in stucco; the woodwork, white enamel finish, with panels of delicate tints … ”

Certainly, the first floor is the most dramatic. The entrance hall features period furniture and a handsome Empire sofa upholstered in forest green velvet. Tour guide Terry Farrell pointed out the original handsome cast-bronze gasolier with glass shades that John Randolph bought in New Orleans on Royal Street. Randolph, known to embrace technology and innovation, created a gas plant on the property and installed gas lighting in the mansion. The house also had a servant call-bell system, and bathrooms with running water.

The most dramatic room in the house is the famed White Ballroom, which simply sparkles.

“I wish this room to be a pure white to offset the beauty of my ladies,” John Randolph was said to have instructed. Designed with double fireplaces, hand-cast archways, Corinthian columns and curved windows, the ballroom often serves as a setting for weddings and receptions. Luxurious white-satin drapery frames the curved windows, and reproduction gold settees are upholstered in white-on-white damask. Even new air-conditioner floor vents are painted white.