FOR SALE_ 1856 Brandon Hall Plantation, Natchez, Mississippi

Brandon Hall is located in a park-like setting east of the Natchez Trace Parkway. Built in 1856, the Greek Revital House is one of the grandest plantation mansions in Adams County. Welcome back to Preservation Travels with Lane and Kevin here at Our Restoration Nation. Today we are bringing you beautiful Brandon Hall, built in 1856 by Gerard Brandon, the son of the first governor of the Mississippi Territory. This is an exquisite Greek Revival masterpiece that we're so excited to bring you, but we do want to draw your attention to the fact that Brandon Hall sits on 45 of its original acres and was a working plantation home. So at its inception, there were enslaved workers present on this property. We want to acknowledge that. However, there are no extant dependency buildings left. Any cabins or exterior buildings you see with this property are not original to the property. They were built in the 1980s and 1990s. The only original structure standing here is this beautiful example of Greek Revival architecture, and it's the architecture we want to talk to you about today. We will be telling you a very special story about an incredible woman who is emancipated from Brandon Hall at the end of the Civil War and went on to gain reparations from the United States government, but we're going to save that for the end, so make sure you stay tuned. But let's talk about the architecture that makes Brandon Hall so spectacular. Here on the exterior, we see the epitome of Greek Revival architecture, starting with its pyramidal roof down to its hierarchy of columns on the exterior. The first level gallery, which extends 360 degrees around the property, features ionic columns, and the frontispiece to the front door has ionic column surround. The banister around the entire front is wrought iron and features a lyre motif. Then on the second floor gallery, we have Corinthian columns, and the entryway there is a Corinthian column frontispiece. You'll note the entire exterior is stuccoed and scored in an asher block design. At the time these properties were built in Europe, it was the trend to create your homes out of large pieces of stone, but here in the Mississippi Valley, that stone wasn't available, so the exteriors were stuccoed and scored to replicate the look. All of the windows on the first and second floor that would exit onto a gallery are jib doors, which means the windows raise and the panels underneath open to create a door to exit onto the exterior. That's just a hint at the incredible architecture that Brandon Hall has, and we welcome you inside to see more of its treasure. Welcome into the entryway, the longest entryway in Greek Revival architecture, second only to Stanton Hall. 18 feet wide, 62 feet long. This space would of course have served to welcome guests into the home, but it also served as the ballroom. Those pocket doors you see at the back of the hall would have remained closed to regular visitors, but during parties they would have been opened and this is where we would have done the Virginia Reel. As is typical with Greek Revival architecture, we have a center hall design, once again with the front entry mirroring a back exit, beautifully done for airflow. But something that's very different about Brandon Hall, it is a triple pile design. Most Greek Revival buildings that we tour are four over four for the interior structure. Brandon Hall is three rooms deep, setting it apart from most architecture of the period. Only one thing of many that sets it apart for its time. Brandon Hall's grand staircase features its original swan necked mule post. The stair rises to the second floor from the back of the main hall. And now let's have a look at the front two formal parlors. Window and door surrounds are symmetrically molded with corner blocks, mantle pieces which are marble, and the plaster and tapestries and medallions feature a wide variety of Grecian motifs, including the water leaf, egg and dart, palm, honeysuckle, and decanthus. I'm in love with this French Water Guild antique mercury mirror, and really all of the antiques in this house are pretty spectacular. And here's a little something extra, if you buy Brandon Hall, it comes furnished. Here we are in the dining room, the third room in our triple pile design. As you'll notice, this room, although a public room, is much more simple in decoration and design than our front parlors and entry hall, which I find interesting and I can find no real reason for in the architectural history. But it does have one element that makes my heart pitty pat as a woman who lives in the and deals with the insects that we have down here, and that is the punka fan behind me. These were very common in plantation homes in the south. They served a dual purpose. These are called punka fans or shoofly fans, and they were imported from the West Indies. They have a cord, as you can see, that runs from the large fan to the doorway down the hall. An enslaved servant would have been moving back and forth. That created a wonderful breeze, both to cool the diners and to keep insects away from the table. On the opposing side of the front hall, we have the family room, a much more informal and comfortable space. Behind the private family parlor, we have the library. The dining room and library are not lavishly decorated. The window and door surrounds have shouldered architraves. The mantelpieces are wood, and the cornices are more simply rendered. The house was built as the home of Gerard Brandon III and his wife Charlotte. Brandon was the son of Mississippi and the grandson of Gerard Brandon, who arrived in Mississippi during the Spanish period and established nearby Selma Plantation. After the deaths of Gerard and Charlotte Brandon in the 1870s, the house became the home of their daughter Elizabeth and her husband Aaron Stanton. Stanton was the son of David Stanton of the Elms and the nephew of Frederick Stanton of Stanton Hall, both in Natchez. The house remained in the ownership of the Brandon descendants until 1914. Brandon Hall passed through nine owners between 1914 and 1983, when it was acquired by the Diffenthal family of New Orleans. Only 40 of its original acres are intact. The Diffenthal family undertook a massive rehabilitation, which included the construction of new dependency buildings. The Diffenthal family have been generous in sharing Brandon Hall with the Natchez community and its civic and charitable organizations. The basement is a beautifully appointed and fully independent apartment, wonderful for the caretakers of this property, and even comes with one of our favorite little secrets in a historic property, a dumb waiter. In 1987, Brandon Hall was beautifully restored, perfectly duplicating the original construction. It's currently used as a very successful wedding and bed and breakfast business. We hope you've enjoyed this look inside Brandon Hall. Now for that story I promised you. I want to share with you the story of Henrietta Wood. Henrietta started her life as an enslaved woman here in the South, but was taken into Ohio and emancipated. She became a free woman of color, but during her time in Ohio, she was kidnapped by slave traders and sold back South and ended up here at Brandon Hall. Of course, she told her enslaver about her story, and he did not care, and she stayed an enslaved woman here at Brandon Hall until emancipation in 1866. But Henrietta wasn't going to take her emancipation as her only reward for the tragedy and trauma that she'd endured. Henrietta sued the government and her kidnappers for wrongful imprisonment and won. She was awarded $2,500 in reparations by the United States government. Although the award was appealed, the award stuck, and Henrietta was allowed to retain her reparations, which in today's money amount to about $53,000. She took that money and sent her children to medical school. And that is the incredible story of Henrietta Wood that you can read in W.C. McDaniel's book, Sweet Taste of Liberty. You may be wondering if you can visit Brandon Hall. We have better news. Two types of better news. First of all, Brandon Hall is a functioning bed and breakfast and event venue. You can come here and spend the night and take a tour of this incredible historic property on your own and learn all the stories, beautiful and dark, that it has to offer. Or if you are feeling entrepreneurial, you can buy Brandon Hall. It's currently on the market for $3.8 million, and all of this incredible history and architecture can be yours, along with the very successful bed and breakfast and event venue business. If you're interested in Brandon Hall, we've linked the information to the real estate agent in the description below. Give her a call and see if you are the next caretaker of this beautiful Greek revival masterpiece.