{"id":3471,"date":"2014-06-03T19:01:41","date_gmt":"2014-06-04T04:01:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/folio.solidsight.net\/?p=3471"},"modified":"2025-11-01T22:11:01","modified_gmt":"2025-11-02T07:11:01","slug":"shadows-on-the-teche","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/folio.solidsight.net\/?p=3471","title":{"rendered":"Shadows On the Teche"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"louisiana<\/a>Located in New Iberia\u2019s Main Street District, set among towering live oak trees draped with Spanish moss on the banks of Bayou Teche, The Shadows, built in 1834 for sugar planter David Weeks, paints a vivid picture of life for the four generations that made this property their home. The Shadows is a Classic Revival-style home with a Louisiana Colonial floor plan and a garden that is as breathtaking as the history preserved here.\u00a0<\/p>\n

David and Mary Weeks were wealthy growers of sugarcane; they owned four plantations totaling approximately 3,000 acres (12\u00a0km2<\/sup>) of\u00a0Acadiana<\/a>\u00a0land.<\/p>\n

The construction of Shadows-on-the-Teche coincided with the apogee of the\u00a0Greek Revival<\/a>\u00a0style in United States architecture. When following this style, builders minimized the installation of superfluous\u00a0decorative<\/a>\u00a0elements such as cornices, moldings, and trim. Decorations were severely limited and were designed to blend into and set off the building’s\u00a0brick<\/a>\u00a0construction. A simple\u00a0porticoed<\/a>\u00a0facade of eight columns marks the exterior of the facade; the columns help to support a second-floor\u00a0verandah<\/a>. The mansion was furnished with\u00a0Federal-style furniture<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Empire-style furniture<\/a>\u00a0imported from the U.S. East Coast.<\/p>\n

Shadows-on-the-Teche was built on the edge of one of Weeks’s sugarcane plantations in\u00a0Iberia Parish<\/a>, in the parish seat. As a town house, Shadows-on-the-Teche was designed for social life and entertainment. It is said that at the time of its construction, Shadows-on-the-Teche was only the third brick house to be built on\u00a0Bayou Teche<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Weeks family began to suffer from a series of family tragedies almost at once after the completion of the house. Planter David Weeks, who became chronically ill while Shadows-on-the-Teche was being built, died in August 1834 in New England while seeking medical attention. Mary Weeks remarried lawyer\u00a0John Moore<\/a>\u00a0but kept her children’s property separate from that of her second husband, as she was allowed to do under\u00a0Louisiana law<\/a>. This property included the 164\u00a0slaves<\/a>\u00a0bequeathed to their children under the terms of her first husband’s will.<\/p>\n

The Shadows-on-the-Teche household was economically and physically dependent on Louisiana slavery. Mary Weeks and John Moore strongly supported slavery and supported the political changes which they thought were necessary to save it; in 1861, Moore was a delegate to the convention in which Louisiana\u00a0seceded from the Union<\/a>. This political status and viewpoint made the household vulnerable during the\u00a0American Civil War<\/a>. Federal troops requisitioned occupancy of the property, and officers of the occupying force quartered themselves in it. Mary Weeks died in December 1863 in Shadows-on-the-Teche while part of the house was being used by the Union troops as an officers’ quarters.\u00a0After David and Mary Weeks’ son William F. Weeks had partly restored the family fortunes during\u00a0Reconstruction<\/span><\/a>, the Weeks family’s status further declined during the third generation of family owners. The Weeks-Hall family was compelled to sell off much of the land surrounding Shadows-on-the-Teche to meet their living expenses.<\/p>\n

\u00a0David and Mary Weeks’s great-grandson, William Weeks Hall, lived in Shadows-on-the-Teche from 1922 until his death in 1958. A strongly preservation-minded individual, Hall sorted and donated the voluminous\u00a0archive<\/a>\u00a0of family papers that he found in the house. Hall also established and maintained an extensive\u00a0garden<\/a>\u00a0of\u00a0live oaks<\/a>,\u00a0bamboo<\/a>,\u00a0camellias<\/a>,\u00a0azaleas<\/a>,\u00a0aspidistras<\/a>, and other plantings, in the former plantation house’s remaining grounds. At the end of his life, Hall donated the house and garden to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which has owned and operated it until the present.<\/p>\n

Image taken with the TL 120. I like that the image is not totally sharp. Gives it kind of a dreamy appearance. \u00a0This is probably way more info on the house than you cared to know \ud83d\ude42 \u00a0 \u00a0 It was really cool as it still had original family furnishings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Located in New Iberia\u2019s Main Street District, set among towering live oak trees draped with Spanish moss on the banks of Bayou Teche, The Shadows, built in 1834 for sugar planter David Weeks, paints a vivid picture of life for the four generations that made this property their home. The Shadows is a Classic Revival-style […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[404,77],"tags":[223,14,213,102,19],"class_list":["post-3471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-b27","category-foliob","tag-3d-world","tag-dorothy-mladenka","tag-fuji-provia-100f","tag-home-made-stereo-camera","tag-tl-120"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/folio.solidsight.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/folio.solidsight.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/folio.solidsight.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/folio.solidsight.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/folio.solidsight.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3471"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/folio.solidsight.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3511,"href":"https:\/\/folio.solidsight.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3471\/revisions\/3511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/folio.solidsight.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/folio.solidsight.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/folio.solidsight.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}