On an otherwise ordinary Thursday afternoon, one of Louisiana's most iconic mansions vanished into smoke. At around 2:00pm on 15 May 2025, fire broke out at Nottoway Plantation, a grand white-columned estate in White Castle, Louisiana.
The fire began in the south wing and moved quickly, swallowing the 53,000-square-foot property in a matter of hours. Despite the efforts of more than 40 firefighters, the structure, the largest remaining antebellum mansion in the American South, was lost. No one was injured. But what followed was stranger than fiction.
