Glencoe Plantation – Jackson, LA

Glencoe Plantation, also known as The Thompson House, was built in 1897 to replace an earlier home that burned. The builder was Robert Thompson, Sr., and the site belonged to his wife, Millie Scott Thompson. The architect is said to have been a Mr. Kennedy. The house remained in the Thompson family until 1961, when Robert Thompson, Jr., sold it to the present owners.

The plantation is an enormous collection of Stick Style, Queen Anne, and Colonial Revival features. It is probably the largest and most elaborate late Victorian country house in the state. This can be most clearly seen in its tower arrangement. Whereas many of the finer houses of the period had a single tower or turret, Glencoe Plantation has three. It also has a variety of roof shapes and massing forms. This gives it a wild, complex, and irregular skyline which epitomizes, more than most contemporaneous country houses in Louisiana, the Victorian picturesque aesthetic.

The facade presents a sequence of gables, dormers, and towers, among which are a squat circular tower with a spire and two tall, narrow square towers with dormered spires. The effect is of an illustration from a child’s fairy-tale book. From the front, the wide facade gives the impression that the house is enormous. In fact, it is for the most part only one room in dept, making it easier for breezes to cool the interior. Much of the house is fronted by a two-story gallery on paired columns; the left side of the house with the circular tower has a two-story gallery on shaped single colunms and delicate Eastlake ornament. Windows are variously shaped and sized. The building is just as rich in textures as it is in silhouette, with scalloped and diamond-shaped shingles, clapboards, slate roofs, filigree bargeboards, and stained glass. The interior features a large entryliving hall, which also is richly elaborated with scroll-sawn filigree ornament, paneling, and a wide staircase.

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