Bellechasse Plantation

Judah P. Benjamin and a partner bought Bellechasse in 1844, and he built a Greek Revival house within two years, but the place was a sugar plantation first. When he sold his share in 1852, the sale included about 150 enslaved people, unnamed in the house histories. Floods struck in 1852 and 1874, and in 1876 the house served Reconstruction efforts to register Black voters. A memorial association bought it in 1924 for $6,500 and moved it inland from the eroding river. It was razed in March 1960, and only the bell survives.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Chalmette Battlefield — 6.3 mi
  The ground of the January 8, 1815 Battle of New Orleans, beside Chalmette National Cemetery and the site of Fazendeville, a freedpeople's community founded in 1867 and bought out in the 1960s.
• Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 — 7.9 mi
  The Garden District's 1833 cemetery of about 1,100 family tombs, closed to visitors in 2019 and reopened on October 1, 2026 for small guided tours run by the Preservation Resource Center.
• New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park — 8.5 mi
  A National Park Service unit created in 1994 to tell where jazz came from, with free programs and a visitor center in the French Quarter and park land inside Louis Armstrong Park.
• The Cabildo — 8.6 mi
  The Spanish town hall on Jackson Square, finished in 1799, where Louisiana changed flags in 1803 and where the state Supreme Court sat in the same room until 1910, Plessy v. Ferguson among its cases.

More markers nearby

• Fort St. Leon — 2.6 mi
• Bethlehem Baptist Church School — 2.9 mi
• Mary Plantation — 3.4 mi
• Plaquemines Parish — 4.3 mi