Magnolia Hall

Magnolia Hall is an imposing home in the Greek Revival style. It has been restored in recent years to a historically accurate exterior. One of the most beautiful ceiling medallion designs in all of Natchez, with arabesques of magnolia leaves and blossoms incorporated into their design. Magnolia Hall derives its name from these spectacular decorative works of art, and they are not to be missed.

As one of the finest examples of Greek Revival style in Natchez, the house features a hooded doorway and a well-proportioned portico with massive Ionic columns. The upper deck of the portico is enclosed with wrought-iron banisters. Henderson had his new brick house stuccoed, painted brown and scored to imitate the brownstone so popular in the northeast at the time. The lower floor of the main structure contains six rooms, including a library, double drawing rooms, a banquet hall, a private sitting room and a bedroom. The wide hall is lofty and has a mahogany-railed stair leading to the upper floor, where there are six more large rooms.

Built in 1858 by Thomas Henderson, a 60-year-old widower at the time and a wealthy planter, merchant and cotton broker. The Henderson’s were a prominent pioneer family. Thomas Henderson’s father, John, had left his native Scotland in 1770. He owned numerous plantations in the Natchez region, wrote the first book published in the Natchez Territory and helped found the Presbyterian Church in Natchez in 1807.

Magnolia Hall is the last grand Natchez house completed before the American Civil War. In 1853 Thomas Henderson had been elected vice-president of the American Colonization Society, though Thomas’ two sons fought for the Confederacy. During the Civil War, Magnolia Hall was damaged by the Union gunboat Essex, which bombarded the town from the Mississippi River several blocks west. A shell from the boat struck the service wing of the house. The damage was slight, and no one in the home was injured.

Thomas Henderson died before the war ended and shortly thereafter the house was sold to the Britton family, who occupied it for many years. Fortunately, an inventory of the furnishings of the Henderson family had been made to settle Thomas’ estate, giving future owners an exact idea of what it contained.

Unfortunately, the house became a rooming house and private Episcopal school in later years, and it was during this time all of the original partition walls were removed, all but two of the original mantelpieces were sold, the ceilings were lowered, the original chandeliers were sold and the home became institutional in character. Then in 1976 the house was saved by the deeding it as a gift to the Preservation Society of Ellicott Hill, the preservation arm of the Natchez Garden Club, by Mrs. George Armstrong of Fort Worth, Texas, and Woodstock Plantation in Adams County.

During the years following its acquisition, the Natchez Garden Club completed a restoration of the house under the direction of New Orleans architectural firm Koch and Wilson and of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. Magnolia Hall is owned and maintained by the Natchez Garden Club, which in the 1930s began a movement to restore, preserve and promote the historic homes of Natchez. The club has acquired many of the original Henderson furnishings and artifacts. The mansion also houses a costumes collection of past Pilgrimage dresses, and a doll collection.

On the outskirts of Natchez, deep among forest trees heavy with Spanish moss, stands the largest and most captivating octagonal house in America, the “Oriental Villa” called Longwood.

Planned in 1859 for cotton nabob Haller Nutt and his wife, Julia, by Philadelphia’s distinguished architect Samuel Sloan, the mansion was begun in 1860.

Using the octagon form with four main floors, a fifth-story solarium and a sixth-story observatory, the structure was designed to have 32 rooms, each with its own entrance onto a balcony.

Inside, as a core to provide ventilation and light, was a great rotunda open to the clerestory six floors above.

On the main or principal floor were to be eight rooms, including a drawing room, banquet hall, library, reception room and a special apartment for Mrs. Nutt. Connecting the levels was to be a grand spiral staircase.

Crowning the whole was a Byzantine-Moorish dome with a 24-foot fini- aly reaching heavenward. The lavish exterior was to be only a hint of the magnificence foreseen in the interior.

Work progressed rapidly, and when the gigantic shell was up, the exultant Mr. Nutt wrote to Sloan, “It is creating much admiration,” and proudly predicted that “after this the Octagon will be the style!” In April 1861, all his hopes and dreams were smashed by the declaration of the war. Sloan’s Philadelphia craftsmen dropped their saws and hammers and fled North to pick up rifles and bayonets, never to return.

Dejectedly, Nutt and a few local workers completed the basement level. This area, where a wine cellar, school room, recreation room and office were to have been, was converted into living quarters for the Nutts and their eight children. Here they lived in nine rooms as war swirled across the South.

On June 15, 1864, Haller Nutt died in the basement of his unfinished mansion.

The diagnosis was pneumonia, but legend insists that he died of a broken heart over his dream house.

Julia and the children lived on in the cellar doing only a minimum to maintain the great hulk looming over them. She died in 1897 and was buried beside her husband in the Longwood family cemetery.

Grandchildren owned Longwood until 1968.

Today it is maintained, yet unfinished, by the Pilgrimage Garden Club.

The average visitor will ask, “Why not finish it now?”

The answer comes, “No, leave it as a monument to the heart-rending break of the War Between the States. Let it mark the end of an era.”

Longwood, located on Lower Woodville Road, was described as “a remembrancer of Eastern magnificence” by its architect in 1861.

Longwood has been designated a National Historic Landmark, a Mississippi Landmark and a historic site on the Civil War Discovery Trail.