Magnolia Mound Plantation House, Baton Rouge

The Magnolia Mound Plantation House is a French Creole house constructed in 1791 near the Mississippi River. Many period documents refer to the plantation as Mount Magnolia. The house and several original outbuildings on the grounds of Magnolia Mound Plantation are examples of the vernacular architectural influences of early settlers from France and the West Indies. The complex is owned by the city of Baton Rouge and maintained by its Recreation Commission (BREC).

The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 7, 1972.

The plantation house, first a cottage, is one of the earliest buildings in the present-day city of Baton Rouge.

The land was owned originally by James Hillin, an early Scots settler who arrived in 1786, who lived there with wife Jane Stanley Hillin, five children, and six enslaved Africans: Thomas, John, Lucia, Catherine, Jenny, and Anna. On December 23, 1791, John Joyce, from County Cork, Ireland, purchased the 950-acre (3.8 km2) property. He, his wife Constance Rochon and their children lived in Mobile, Alabama. By the time of his drowning, on May 9, 1798, during a sailing trip from New Orleans to Mobile, Joyce held about 50 slaves at the plantation, who cultivated indigo, tobacco, cotton, and sugarcane under the supervision of an overseer.

The widow Constance Rochon Joyce married the widower Armand Duplantier, an influential person in the area who had four surviving children from his first marriage and had managed a plantation in the vicinity of Pointe Coupee. She brought 54 slaves to the marriage from her estate. He was a former captain of the Continental Army under the Marquis de Lafayette. They had five children together. From 1802 to 1805, they enlarged the house to accommodate their large family, although they used it mostly as a country house. Armand Duplantier died in 1827.

Duplantier descendants owned the plantation until 1849; the property then had several owners through the late 19th century. At that time Louis Barillier sold the land and improvements to Robert A. Hart.

Edward J. Gay purchased the deed in the early 1860s and had several overseers run the plantation for him, including the years after the Civil War. In 1869, the manager was W.L. Larimore.

In the 20th century, Mrs. Blanche Duncan acquired Magnolia Mound Plantation through a family inheritance. In 1951, Mrs. Duncan commissioned the architectural firm of Goodman and Miller of Baton Rouge to do extensive alterations and additions.

After the property fell into disrepair, in 1966 the City of Baton Rouge exercised its right of eminent domain to purchase the house and 16 acres (65,000 m2), in order to preserve the house and its dependencies for their historic and architectural value. The property is a green space within the city.