Belle Grove was the largest mansion ever built in the South. New Orleans architect Henry Howard designed it; John Andrews built it between 1852 and 1857 for $80,000 — seventy-five rooms over four floors, sixty-two feet tall, a jail cell inside. Andrews had a rivalry with John Randolph of Nottoway a few miles away, and the two had Howard build them competing palaces. Belle Grove won. It was bigger than Nottoway and finer.
It did not survive the economy that built it. After the Civil War Andrews sold it for $12,000 — a fraction of what it cost. The Ware family held it sixty-five years while the house rotted in the Louisiana wet; a roof leak took a whole wing. In 1943 a man named Nehrbass bought the ruin and seventeen acres for $2,000, meaning to save it. He didn't get the chance. A fire in the night in March 1952 took what was left, and by 1958 the rest was bulldozed flat. There is a subdivision called Belle Grove on the ground now. That is the whole monument.
What stood here
4 surviving images.
Belle Grove in its long decline — the largest mansion built in the South, decaying decades before the 1952 fire
Belle Grove Plantation, White Castle — the scale that beat Nottoway, photographed in ruin
Interior decay at Belle Grove — seventy-five rooms going back to the weather
Belle Grove, Iberville Parish — the grandeur and the rot in one frame