Description:

San Francisco Plantation, on River Road, is one of the grande dames along the Mississippi River. But it’s got an unusual façade, and it’s no Tara. When Edmond Marmillion built it in 1853, his family had been decimated-his wife, and subsequently six of his eight children, had succumbed to tuberculosis over a 20-year period. It wasn’t a happy house. Marmillion intended it as a residence for surviving sons Valsin and Charles. Marmillion was an unsuccessful sugar planter and his son Valsin didn’t really want to come back from Europe and take over a sugar plantation, but that’s what he did in 1856, after his father died. When Valsin took over, he said he was “sans fruscins,” or penniless. The name evolved into San Francisco.

The construction was ornate, with slave labor creating hand-painted ceilings, faux marble and wood–grained walls throughout. Dubbed “Steamboat Gothic” in Frances Parkinson Keyes’ 1952 novel, San Francisco looked more like a riverboat than a Greek temple. After changing hands and surviving the U. S. Corps of Engineer’s extensive new levee construction project after the Great Flood of 1927, San Francisco was eventually opened to the public in the 1950s. Today it’s owned by Marathon Oil, who’s restored the house to its glory days when it was a shining new symbol of antebellum grandeur in Louisiana. You can experience this National Register of Historic Places mansion today just as Edmond Marmillion meant it to be, as it reopened on September 1st to the public. On October 25 and 26^th, San Francisco also hosts “Frisco Fall Fest,” with over 100 artists, crafters and chefs on the grounds.