De La Ronde Ruins

Bayou Preservation was selected to restore the De La Ronde Plantation ruins in Chalmette, Louisiana, and we completed this project over several years during different phases, working very closely with the client. The De La Ronde Plantation was an important part of the Battle of New Orleans in 1812, and the plantation served as a field hospital and headquarters for the British troops. The plantation house survived the War of 1812 and the Civil War, and then burned down in the early 20th century. The ruins now sit in the middle of a highway near heavy industry, and there was no water or power at the site, which made this job particularly challenging. We restored the ruins using only the historic bricks on site, and we matched the historic mortar recipe as closely as possible. Bayou Preservation also rebuilt some of the masonry elements that had been lost so that the ruins now accurately show the full size of the old house. The new piers were built to purposefully look different from the historic piers that had weathered naturally.