History
Early Years
Built in the early 1700's, the original Elwood Plantation was the oldest home in the Mississippi Valley. Changing ownership a few times in the 1700s, Nicholas Chauvin La Freniere was granted the land on which the home was built from Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, then Governor of French Louisiana. La Freniere was the first Attorney General of Louisiana and leader of the revolt against Spanish rulers in 1768. He was later executed on October 25, 1769. Prior to his death, La Freniere and his brothers had constructed a series of ditches and damns surrounding their property to protect from rising levels of the Mississippi River. In 1724, the River level was high and their neighbors' property was damaged more severely due to these ditches and damns. The La Freniere brothers were ordered to remove these structures, but because of this incident, the first Mississippi River Levees were constructed.
The Plantation was for a time a working farm where rice, corn, tobacco and vegetables were thought to be grown.
Declining Years
Following a number of different owners before and after the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, the Plantation's once booming sugar production was greatly impacted by the Civil War. Changing owners several more times, it became the property of the Illinois Central Railroad in 1908. In significant decay, the property was restored in the 1920s by Jack Lemann and his wife and then owned by Mr. and Mrs. Durel Black. In 1940, the main house was significantly damaged by fire and the original two-story mansion was rebuilt as a one-story home.
Elmwood Plantation Restaurant
Elmwood Plantation Inc. purchased the home from the Blacks and reopened it as the Elmwood Plantation Restaurant in 1962. Owned by Joseph Marcello and Nick Mosca, the restaurant was well-known throughout the area and operated for 16 years. In 1978 another fire all but destroyed the building and a number of lawsuits and public debate followed to determine the fate of the building and its surrounding historic land.
Elmwood Plantation Estates
Following a long series of failed attempts to restore the plantation home, the property was purchased in the late 1990s by Regal Land Investments LLC and developed into a private residential community. Twenty-six individual lots were created of varying sizes along with two private streets, Bourgeois Court and Cutrera Lane, designed to preserve the massive live oaks that the property is know for.