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51 Once located in St. Bernard Parish near the site of the Battle of New Orleans, Three Oaks had rather obscure origins. The house photographed by Tebbs apparently stood on the site of an earlier structure used as a hospital during the battle and probably was built by French émigré Sylvan Peyroux (ca. 1770–ca. 1835), a sugar grower and wine importer. Large galleries surrounded the house, enclosed by Doric columns made of brick and painted white. A hipped roof was marked by two dormers on the front and rear and one on each side. Each floor had four large rooms and two smaller ones at the rear. Edgar Dahlgren, son of a wealthy Natchez plantation owner, purchased the house prior to the Civil War. One of its columns was damaged by a cannonball in April 1862—fired, ironically, by a ship in Admiral David Farragut’s fleet using a revolutionary naval “shell gun” invented by Edgar’s uncle, Admiral John A. Dahlgren. Because it was ideally situated for a federal headquarters , Three Oaks was spared destruction. Members of the Cenas family, followed by the Perez family, owned Three Oaks after the war. The American Sugar Refining Company eventually purchased the house, but most of the property was abandoned. In the early 1960s, only the main house—by then in a dilapidated state—presided over grounds that had been developed as part of a canal system. Three Oaks met an inglorious end in 1966, torn down by the American Sugar Refining Company because restoration costs were judged too high. Tebbs’s photographs of Three Oaks are among his most crisp, precise, and geometric. THREE OAKS PLANTATION ca. 1800/ca. 1820 Three Oaks Plantation (three-quarter view), vintage gelatin silver print, Louisiana State Museum, 1956.087.318.1 52 Glendale Plantation (rear elevation), vintage gelatin silver print, Louisiana State Museum, 1956.087.186b ...

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