The History of Oak Alley Plantation
A sugar plantation called Bon Séjour. A house built by enslaved people between 1837 and 1839. An auction in 1866, a restoration in the 1920s, and a landmark designation in 1974. The dated version.
Bon Séjour, 1830–1836
The land was worked for sugar from 1830 under Valcour Aime, a planter whose holdings ran along this stretch of the west bank. In 1836 Aime exchanged the property with his brother-in-law, Jacques Télesphore Roman, for a plantation Roman held elsewhere. The oaks were already there and already old; the estate was called Bon Séjour, pleasant sojourn, and the name Oak Alley came from the river rather than from the family.
Built 1837–39, and by whom
The house was raised between 1837 and 1839 by people Roman enslaved, under an overseer named George Swainy. Roman's father-in-law was the New Orleans architect Joseph Pilié, and he is the probable designer. The attribution is long-standing and well-supported. It is not documented by a signed drawing, so it is stated as probable rather than certain.
The Big House is Greek Revival, and its defining feature is a free-standing peripteral colonnade of twenty-eight columns, matching the twenty-eight trees. Whoever set that number was working to the avenue that already existed.
The people enslaved at Oak Alley
A sugar plantation of this size was a labour operation before it was anything else. The people who cut and milled the cane, kept the house and worked the forge are documented in the plantation records. So are the people who built the house. The Oak Alley Foundation has published what it can recover as a public slavery database, naming individuals.
That database, and the exhibit built from it in the reconstructed quarters, are why the site can be visited as a historic plantation rather than as a house with a garden. If this is the part of the story you came for, the Slavery at Oak Alley exhibit is billed at an hour on its own, and the pairings with Whitney Plantation put a museum built entirely around it in the same day.
After emancipation, 1866–1924
The plantation was sold at auction in 1866. Six decades of tenancy, wage labour, changing owners and slow decline followed. The exhibit called The People of Oak Alley covers them, runs to 1924, and answers what happened to the families who stayed.
The Stewarts and the Foundation
Andrew and Josephine Stewart bought the property in 1925 and restored the house, which is the direct reason it is standing. Josephine Stewart established the non-profit foundation that owns and runs it today, and the family graveyard on the grounds is theirs.
National Historic Landmark, 1974
Oak Alley was listed on the National Register of Historic Places and designated a National Historic Landmark on 2 December 1974. The building record was documented for the Historic American Buildings Survey, which is where the measured drawings and the column count come from.
Where each period is on the ground today
The chronology is legible on the site itself if you know which building belongs to which decade. The alley predates everything, including the family that gets the credit for it. The house is pure 1830s. The reconstructed quarters and the exhibit inside them stand for the years the house was worked. The Sugarcane Theatre covers the economy that paid for all of it, and The People of Oak Alley picks the story up after 1866.
The two burial sites bracket the whole thing. The Roman family tomb belongs to the antebellum plantation. The Stewart graveyard belongs to the people who saved the building ninety years later. Walking from one to the other is the shortest version of this page.
The chronology in one table
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1830 | Valcour Aime works the land for sugar as Bon Séjour |
| 1836 | Aime exchanges the property with Jacques Télesphore Roman |
| 1837–39 | The Big House is built by enslaved labour under overseer George Swainy |
| 1866 | The plantation is sold at auction |
| 1866–1924 | Tenancy, wage labour and decline; the subject of The People of Oak Alley |
| 1925 | Andrew and Josephine Stewart buy and restore the house |
| 1974 | Listed on the National Register and designated a National Historic Landmark |
Dates from the Oak Alley Foundation and from the Historic American Buildings Survey record for the property.
See it standing
Trips from New Orleans with the drive, the admission and a slot on the house tour. From a half-day up to a full day on the River Road.
What survives of all this is set out building by building on the plantation page. Every trip that gets you to the gate is compared on Oak Alley Plantation tour from New Orleans.