Historic Natchez Pilgrimage

In 1932, when cotton collapsed and the river traffic had long since moved on, Natchez did something no Southern city had done before: it opened its private houses to paying strangers. The Depression had gutted the city's economy. Antebellum mansions — remnants of the years when Natchez was the wealthiest city per capita in America, a center of cotton planters and Mississippi River trade — stood empty or half-maintained. So the garden clubs invented the historic home tour, creating an economic lifeline out of architecture and memory. It worked. And the model spread. Every historic home tour program in the American South traces back to what Natchez did first. The Pilgrimage still runs twice a year — spring and fall — opening 20+ antebellum homes, many of them private residences accessible only during these weeks. Tickets are sold per house or as multi-house packages; spring season sells out, so book early. Among the properties is Longwood, the largest octagonal house in the United States. Philadelphia architect Samuel Sloan designed it in 1859 for cotton planter Haller Nutt. Work halted in 1861 at the start of the Civil War. Nutt died of pneumonia in 1864, leaving the work incomplete. Of the 32 rooms planned, only nine on the basement floor were finished. The Pilgrimage Garden Club owns and operates it now as a museum — ornate first floor, unfinished upper floors, byzantine onion dome overhead. The last burst of antebellum opulence, frozen mid-construction when the world that built it collapsed.