Outsiders Push Sale, Reconstruction of Mississippi’s Old South Mansions
Westerners and other outsiders with a yen for the romance of the Old South are buying antebellum mansions in this historic old river town at prices that native sons of Dixie would never pay.
The would-be Rhett Butlers and Scarlett O’Haras are renovating estates that often had been kept in the same Mississippi families for generations. And, like money-strapped English aristocrats, many have opened their mansions to the public to make a buck.
“I’d estimate about a quarter of the antebellum homes in Natchez are owned by people from out of the state,” said Bob Haltom, a Natchez real estate broker who specializes in the sale of homes built before the Civil War, or the War Between the States as it’s called around here. “That’s something that’s come in just the past 10 years.”
Little Turnover Elsewhere
It also seems to be a local trend. Real estate brokers in other Old South cities, such as Mobile, Ala., Charleston, S.C., and Atlanta, Ga., report little turnover in antebellum homes in recent years.
Part of the reason may be the rich history of Natchez, a town of about 22,000, and the availability of old homes. Founded in 1716, Natchez is promoted as the oldest surviving community on the Mississippi River--predating New Orleans by two years--and the Natchez Heritage Foundation said 600 antebellum homes still stand.
It also may be partly because of the salesmanship of Haltom, the Mississippi agent for Sotheby Parke Bernet Realty Corp. Haltom has been buying mailing lists from antique and history magazines and sending color brochures of the homes to prospective clients. He also advertises in magazines on antiques and history that have broad circulations.
Desire to Sell
For years, he said, many Southerners have wanted to get rid of their old family mansions, which have fallen into disrepair or have drained their pocketbooks. But not until recently have they found many buyers interested in paying more than “a pittance” for the old homes, he said.
Haltom said there has been a handful of out-of-state antebellum homeowners in Natchez for a long time. But the number has increased as prices have taken “a quantum leap,” he said, with some homes now selling for more than three times what buyers paid for them just a couple of years before.
“One of our best markets in this area has been Texas and California,” Haltom said. “It’s no secret that Californians and Texans sometimes amass huge fortunes. And when a man gets rich and wonders about the next thing to do, one of those things might be to buy an antebellum house in Louisiana or Mississippi.”
Haltom has sold about 25 antebellum homes since he began, at prices ranging from $25,000 (mostly run-down cottages whose only claim to fame is age) to about $1 million. He had one mansion on the market for $3.5 million, but got no takers.
Buyer From California
One of his customers was Ron Riches, a 45-year-old real estate developer from Encino, Calif.
“My wife has always had a Scarlett O’Hara complex, and she plays the role well,” said Riches, who bought a white-columned, two-story Greek revival-style mansion in February, 1978. Riches won’t say how much he paid for it.
He takes a Southern respite for a week or two at a time every few months. A photograph of this “Southern” gentleman and his hoop-skirted wife and two daughters graces the mantel of the vintage 1818 Monmouth Plantation, which has 26 manicured acres.
The home’s most colorful owner was Gen. John Anthony Quitman, a Mexican War hero and a Mississippi governor and congressman, who bought it in 1826.
Riches said he had some misgivings about the high cost of restoring the estate.
“I kept hoping the deal would fall through,” he said. “But I was obsessed with it. It’s like the old general himself was guiding us and we didn’t have our sanity anymore.”
Bed-and-Breakfast Rooms
In 1980, Riches opened 14 of Monmouth’s bedrooms to bed-and-breakfast guests who pay $75 to $100 for double occupancy per night.
Haltom said most owners of antebellum homes start some kind of commercial venture, not only to bring in money to cover upkeep, but also to gain a major tax break under a 1976 historic preservation law. The tax deduction is only available to historic homes open to the public.
Riches said his investment is finally beginning to pay for itself, though he bought Monmouth primarily for sentimental reasons.
“In California, as a developer, I tear things down after they’re 20 years old. We don’t allow them to become history. People in California don’t have a lot of historical things--an adobe mission or two scattered here and there is all.
“Because we have a historical vacuum out there, people are flocking to the South.”
Vicksburg Home
Riches said he began spreading the word about the relatively virgin market for historic homes in Mississippi. Some California friends, Ted and Estelle Mackey, are among the converts. They purchased the Cedar Grove home in Vicksburg in 1983.
“Its claim to fame is it has a union cannonball lodged in the parlor wall,” said Mackey, a 45-year-old attorney with offices in Palm Springs and Beverly Hills. “It was shot from a union gunboat during the siege of Vicksburg.”
Mackey said Cedar Grove has been open for public tours for at least 25 years, and he has begun renting bed-and-breakfast rooms since he purchased the home.
But Cedar Grove is not a mere showplace. He and his wife live in the home about six months of the year.
“I don’t know that there’s any profit, but there’s a lot of fun in it,” he said. “I can sit in the parlor in Cedar Grove and literally meet the world. We have people come through from Europe, Australia, everywhere.”
Mansion Off Market
Haltom had listed the Dunleith House of Natchez for $3.5 million, but the house never sold and the owner recently took it off the market.
The current owner of Dunleith House, Bill Heins of Austin, Tex., paid “less than $1 million” for the house in 1976 and has extensively renovated it.
The 17-room, three-story home sits on 40 acres and is the last remaining Greek revival-style antebellum mansion in Mississippi with two-story columns lining all four sides of the building, Haltom said.
In addition to the main home, the $3.5-million price included several outbuildings: an 18-room garconniere, a two-story carriage house with stables, the caretaker’s house, two greenhouses, a potting shed, a tractor shed, and the two-story pigeonnier, which Haltom said was the “Barrytown Tavern” in the original Hollywood production of “Huckleberry Finn.”
Bank Taken Over
The Carpenter family had owned Dunleith for five generations before Heins bought it, Haltom said. They sold the home when their Natchez bank was taken over by a larger Jackson bank.
Unlike the trend in Mississippi, only a “handful” of antebellum homes have been sold in the last 10 years in Georgia, said Kathy Koenig, a Sotheby sales associate in Atlanta.
Koenig said many of the old homes in Georgia have been torn down to make room for development, whereas Mississippi is apt to have more antebellum homes left because of its relatively stagnant economy.
“The very few that are left, people hang onto them,” she said.
The executive director of the South Carolina Assn. of Realtors, Richard Davis, said some antebellum mansions are left in that state, especially in the Charleston area. But the antebellum market has not changed in South Carolina in the last 10 years, he said, with only an occasional sale.
A real estate agent in Mobile, Ala., Anna Belle Newman, said she has one antebellum home on the market, but that is rare in her city.
“I’ve been in the market for years and I’ve never noticed people calling from out of the state interested in antebellum homes,” she said. “If they are sold, they’re sold to local people interested in fixing them up.”
