Longwood, Octagonal mansion in Natchez, United States.
Longwood is an octagonal villa in Natchez, Mississippi, topped with a Byzantine dome and planned for 32 rooms across several levels. Today only the basement floor is fully furnished and habitable, while the upper stories remain unfinished.
Work on this villa began in the late 1850s and stopped abruptly in 1861 when northern craftsmen left the site after the Civil War broke out. The estate has remained in this unfinished state ever since, a frozen witness to the antebellum era.
The house is also called Nutt's Folly, after cotton planter Haller Nutt, who never saw it finished. On July 4, 1867, more than 9,000 formerly enslaved people attended a Freedmen's Picnic on the grounds. In 2010 the exterior stood in for the mansion of vampire Russell Edgington in the HBO series True Blood.
Longwood stands at 140 Lower Woodville Road in Natchez and is operated year-round as a historic house museum by the Pilgrimage Garden Club. Visitors tour the nine finished basement rooms and the bare upper floors; the house can also be rented. The octagonal brick exterior, with its white-columned balconies and onion dome, is best seen from the lawn.
With its octagonal footprint, this estate is the largest residential structure of its shape in the United States. The upper floors still display bare wooden frames and unplastered walls from the 1860s, exactly as the craftsmen left them.
The community of curious travelers
AroundUs brings together thousands of curated places, local tips, and hidden gems, enriched daily by 92,958 contributors worldwide.
