I've taken tours of many of the houses along River Road, stayed the night in the Myrtles Plantation outside of Baton Rouge at least 7 times, and have been to a few other plantation houses in other states. Most of them did not have rooms the size of the ballroom in "Charlotte." In fact, most of them did not have ballrooms. They would have parlors or quite often double parlors that could be closed off to separate the men from the women for after-dinner conversation, but it's interesting to realize how much smaller people were then. The houses are magnificent, but not nearly as huge as they seem in the movies.
Having said that, I toured Houmas House several years ago and had the pleasure of standing on the balcony and yelling down at the tourists below the line about "where you're standing I could spit in your eye, etc., etc." It was great fun!
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bthrock
11 years ago
I went to Houmas House in September 2009, before I had seen this movie. The interiors don't match the movie, but the house is well worth seeing. They have a small restaurant there where I had one of the five best meals of my life. A carriage house has been converted into a bar, where the drinks were wonderful. If you're in the area, the house is a must-see. We also toured the Laura plantation (good for nuts-and-bolts history and a realistic look at what the life was like, especially for the people doing the work), and Oak Alley (beautiful for the Southern plantation fantasy).
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