De la case au grenier : bref aperçu des habitats ruraux des « nègres » et des maîtres dans la Louisiane coloniale des années 1720-1740

• Main Author: Gilles-Antoine Langlois
• Format: Article
• Language: fra
• Published: Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication 2015-09-01
• Series: In Situ : Revue de Patrimoines
• Subjects: Louisiane; Nouvelle-Orléans; Natchez; Antilles; architecture rurale; construction
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/insitu/11893

If there are quite a number representation of the urban colonial Louisiana, the testimonies of rural housing are less important. Who built what for whom? Actually these matters find most frequently the same answer, because new colonists commonly owned a house in town, and a plantation outside the city. The two types of building observed quite similar construction rules, using the same materials, and most often, the labor of the same slaves. Some actors can be noticed, as they are strongly identified by their writings or their iconographic production. One will evoque the work of De Batz, Caillot, Dumont de Montigny and Le Page du Pratz, in the years 1720-1740, and their technical projects of buildings, their descriptions of indigenous villages, or their general plans of plantations houses assigned to different productions: indigo, rice ... From the big house to the slaves camp, the architectural typologies of Louisiana are proving strongly differentiated. They look less luxurious than in a colony like Saint-Domingue, that can create more significant gains. The quality of a few number of engineers overcomes the colonial personnel, or the incompetence in the leadership of commerce, whether under the Company of the Indies and/or the Royal direction. We got only some archaelogical tracks from these architectures made by Indians or early settlers in Louisiana. However, forms, processes and materials used by these rural architectures, have experienced continuity due to the simplicity of a vernacular construction, rudimentary and easy to pass. And the hurricanes have less undermined this sustainability than the use of PreFab Housing.