Arlington

About this property

Arlington is a historic Federal style house and outbuildings in Natchez, Mississippi. The 55-acre (22 ha) property, which includes three contributing buildings, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973. It was further declared a National Historic Landmark in 1974. Following a fire that destroyed much of the main house, it was placed on Mississippi's 10 most endangered historic places for 2009 by the Mississippi Heritage Trust. The date that construction of the house began is murky. It is thought by scholars to have been built about 1819–20. Its design has historically been attributed to James Hampton White, but no documentation exists to validate the claim. What is documented is that Lewis Evans, a wealthy Natchez planter, purchased the land on which Arlington stands in 1806. Here he established a plantation and built a house. In 1814 he sold a portion of the plantation containing his house to Jonathan Thompson, a land speculator. Thompson then sold the Arlington property, including the house built by Evans, to Mrs. Jane Surget White in December 1818. Jane White was the daughter of Pierre Surget, a French emigrant at the head of one of Natchez's leading families. John Hampton White died on October 15, 1819, during a yellow fever epidemic. Jane White died on July 1, 1825. She found dead in her bed the morning after a ball to celebrate completion of the house. The cause of death is unknown but rumors and folklore range from stabbed to death to died of indigestion. The house later came into possession of S. S. Boyd and his descendants. Circa 1937, Arlington was admired by architectural historian Joe Frazer Smith and was owned by Mr. and Mrs. Hubert Barnum. According to a feature on the Natchez Trace Parkway project, at the time it was still "Set like a jewel in grounds laid out like an English park — with flaming azaleas in the fragrant gardens, ivy tumbling over the ancient eaves and clinging to the burnt-brick walls and neatly-clipped green hedges lining its flagstone walks Arlington has been little touched by the hand of time. It still retains its hand-carved rosewood stairway and much of its original furnishings—gold brocades, priceless silver services, paintings by Sully and Audubon and an unusually fine library." A photo of Arlington appears in Eudora Welty's Notes on River Country. Arlington has been considered by architectural historians to be "one of four important Federal Style villas which established the basic form for the later antebellum houses of Natchez." Situated atop a low natural hill, the red brick house is two full stories above a low basement. The exterior of the main block measures 64 by 87 feet (20 m × 27 m).

Location

Categories

Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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