Nottoway was the largest antebellum mansion still standing in the South — fifty-three thousand square feet, built in 1859 for John Randolph, a three-story rotunda ringed in white columns, hand-carved Italian marble inside. For most of a century it was the one that outlasted its rivals. Belle Grove, the bigger house Henry Howard built for Randolph's competitor a few miles north, burned in 1952. Nottoway kept standing. It ran as an event venue and resort; it was the survivor.
On the afternoon of May 15, 2025, a fire started in the south wing. It reignited that evening, took the roofline, and brought the rotunda and the columns down. Crews worked more than eighteen hours; the main house was a total loss, rubble by morning. The outbuildings were spared. Early reports point to an electrical fault. Seventy-three years after Belle Grove, the other giant Howard's era produced on this river went the same way it did — in the dark, to fire. The two of them are a matched set now.
What stood here
3 surviving images.
Nottoway in 1986 — the largest antebellum mansion in the South, standing, thirty-nine years before the fire
The rotunda and white columns of Nottoway, 1986 — the facade the May 2025 fire brought down
Nottoway Plantation, White Castle — the house as it stood before May 15, 2025