Free previewStop 8 of Garden District Walking Tour: Mansions and Lafayette Cemetery
A Mansion Built to Beat a Rival
You're standing on Jackson Avenue, at the edge of the Garden District, in front of the biggest house on this whole walk. Look up at those tall white columns rising from the ground all the way to the roofline. They weren't put there just to hold up a porch. They were put there to make a point.
The man making it was Henry Sullivan Buckner, a cotton merchant. Cotton was the money that built uptown New Orleans in his day, and Buckner was a cotton baron of the first rank.
He'd once had a business partner, a man named Frederick Stanton. Then the partnership split, and the partner became a rival. So when Buckner set out to build a home, the goal was clear: bigger and grander than anything Stanton had. He hired the architect Lewis E. Reynolds, and in 1856 the house was finished.
That's the opening. The rest plays at stop 8 of Garden District Walking Tour: Mansions and Lafayette Cemetery (2 min in all). Unlock the tour to hear it all, or try stop 1 free first.
