NOTTOWAY PLANTATION Plantation — White Castle, Louisiana Status: Historic site · Access: Open to public Dossier: https://haunthunt.com/place/nottoway-plantation-white-castle-louisiana/ The largest antebellum mansion in the South—53 rooms on the river. A plantation in White Castle, Louisiana, Nottoway Plantation is filed here for what the record attaches to it. The largest antebellum mansion in the South—53 rooms on the river. It sits in the archive under local folklore and haunted places. The dossier holds 1 reported claim, 1 legend and 1 documented fact, with the verified spine filed separately from the lore. The site is open to visitors. Nottoway was the biggest — the 1859 mansion John Hampden Randolph built on the River Road, 53,000 square feet and 64 rooms, the largest antebellum plantation house left in the South. Randolph destroyed the architect's plans when it was done so nobody could copy it; the 155 enslaved people who made the sugar fortune are the other half of the file. The mansion was the boast — Henry Howard's Greek Revival-Italianate design, the rotunda overlooking the oak lawns, the columns that made it the River Road's monument to what sugar could buy. The house survived the war, the century, and the resort conversion — until May 15, 2025, when the fire took it. The fire is the file's end — the 166-year-old mansion burned to the ground, leaving the dependencies and the grounds and the question of whether to rebuild. The file keeps what was lost: the biggest house, the enslaved people who built it and worked it, and the fire that made the largest antebellum mansion in the South a memory. Nottoway is the archive's burned file — the 1859 mansion that was the biggest in the South, the 155 enslaved who made it, and the 2025 fire that took the house. WHY THIS FILE MATTERS Nottoway is the archive's fire file — the largest antebellum mansion, the enslaved labor that built it, and the 2025 fire that ended 166 years of survival. A house that burned keeps its grounds — the file's suggestion being that Nottoway's hold is the loss: the mansion that's gone, the dependencies that remain, and the biggest house in the South that exists now only in the record. FILED CLAIMS — 1 on record, reported not verified · [Local folklore] apparition: Reported a woman’s figure and a presence in the halls. Nottoway Plantation in White Castle, Louisiana is the kind of old house where every sound eventually gets a name. It circulates as local folklore — the kind communities keep rather than verify. 'Nottoway Plantation' carries the account. The apparition is the file's anchor — every other report orbits it. source: Nottoway Plantation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nottoway_Plantation) HISTORY — 1 documented facts · [1859] Built 1859; a Union gunboat shell struck the house during the war. Nottoway Plantation's documented history is the record the rest of the file stands on. It's verified history: the dossier's load-bearing detail. The detail is preserved in 'Nottoway Plantation'. The detail belongs to the verified spine of the entry. SOURCES — 1 cited · Nottoway Plantation — Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nottoway_Plantation — HauntHunt is a research archive. Claims are filed as reported — documented where sources exist, marked as folklore or unverified where they do not. Methodology: https://haunthunt.com/methodology/ · Corrections: https://haunthunt.com/report/