Destrehan Plantation, Antebellum mansion in Destrehan, Louisiana.

Destrehan Plantation is a two-story mansion in St. Charles Parish, Louisiana, built in a raised French colonial style with Greek Revival elements. A wide gallery with a white railing runs across the front on slender white columns, set on a light foundation. The facade is gray-blue with dark teal shutters, and the hipped gray-shingle roof carries two tall red brick chimneys and three small dormer windows.

Robert Antoine Robin de Logny contracted the mulatto carpenter Charles Pacquet in 1787 to build a raised Creole house for his indigo plantation; the contract, kept at the St. Charles Parish courthouse in Hahnville, makes it the oldest documented house in the lower Mississippi valley. Jean-Noël Destréhan bought it at auction in 1792 and added two semi-detached wings for his 14 children. In 1811 the parish tribunal met here after the German Coast Uprising and condemned 18 rebels.

The name comes from Jean Noël Destrehan, whose family ran the estate for generations. Visitors today can walk through the rooms and see how French Colonial traditions merged with later Greek influences.

The estate sits along River Road and can be explored on guided tours. On hot days, the verandas offer shade, and comfortable shoes help on the wooden floors.

The 1790 building contract between Robert Antoine Robin de Logny and the carpenter Charles Pacquet survives in the St. Charles Parish courthouse at Hahnville, making the house the oldest documented one in the lower Mississippi River Valley. Pacquet, a mulatto carpenter, was paid with six enslaved workers' labour, one enslaved man, a cow and calf, 100 bushels each of corn and rice, and $100 cash.