Restoration
Restoration of the San Francisco Plantation began in 1973 and took over 3 years to complete at a cost of over 2 million dollars. The restoration took place after the deteriorating plantation was purchased by The Energy Corporation of Louisiana as the site of an oil refinery and the house was included in the purchase. The chairman of the corporation, Frederick B. Ingram, urged restoration and the house and seven acres were donated to the newly formed San Francisco Plantation Foundation.
The house was restored to its most elegant period, around 1860, when Antoine Valsin and his wife Louise completed redecorating. Every effort was made to faithfully restore or reproduce every aspect of the house to this period, from the structure, the ceiling, and wall painting, to the light fixtures, accessories, carpets, furniture and draperies.
Fortunately, few structural changes had been made during the building’s 120 years of history prior to restoration. Most of the structural changes were removable additions such as modern bathrooms and kitchens. However, some alterations were most serious such as partitions with doors had been built at the head of the two interior stairs on the main floor.
Archaeologists were called in to work with architects in determining more precisely how the house looked in 1860. This work included tests of fabric and paint sequences, on-site and in laboratories. Following these investigations, work began to open up the building for further research and to begin restoration.
Wooden ceilings on the ground floor level were removed to reveal the original Creole-style exposed-joist and floorboard construction, along with hand-made lead plumbing pipes, all bearing the earliest paint sequences.
Now it was possible to begin restoration.
First the slate roof was restored. Then working down, the exterior walls were repaired. The first floor of the house is brick, supporting peg wood framework for the upper levels. On the second floor, framework is filled in with brick in the old French style, four inches thick, then stuccoed on the outside and plastered on the inside. The masonry required extensive repair. Further repairs involved leveling of the attic balcony and restoration of many pieces of millwork, several of which bore the initials EBM, for Edmond Bozonier Marmillion.
The roof drainage system was repaired, and the leaded domes of the cisterns that flank the house were reconstructed using evidence of old photos and fragments of the original ribs and struts.
The exterior was repainted in the striking colors of the Marmillion period.
The big challenge however was restoring and reproducing the lavish and intricate interior painting. Specialist painters were brought in from around the world to assist in the delicate and demanding work. In some rooms only small areas of graining and marbling could be scraped to the Marmillion paint sequence while others all the appropriate work was revealed. But even in the most difficult areas, enough was exposed to permit faithful reproduction. Three of the frescoed ceilings had been heavily overpainted at some time, but enough of the original work was exposed to establish color.
Furnishing the house also became a challenge because none of the original contents remained. However, fairly extensive inventories of the house contents (required under Napoleonic Code) were discovered and these provided an adequate frame of the reference for recreating the styles of the Marmillion period. In most cases, it was evident where the individually listed pieces should be placed.
Insistence on authenticity raised some unusual problems, but the end result of this painstaking attention to detail, in the structural restoration and redecorating as well as in the contents of the house, is a faithful reflection of the lifestyle of the period.
Restoration of the San Francisco Plantation House was completed in 1977.
The house has been declared a National Historic Landmark and is open to the public, through the auspices of the San Francisco Plantation Foundation.
Excerpts from the book “Return to Elegance”, which is available in the gift shop at San Francisco Plantation.