©
2001 Lawrence David Moon • Published by Édition von
Rapp • All Rights Reserved Worldwide
Magnolia
Mansion, formerly referred to as the Harris-Maginnis House, was
purchased by internationally recognized entertainer Hollie Diann
Vest and her mother, Wanda Marie Hansen, on the first of October,
2001. Prior to that, the home has had a magnificent and often turbulent
history of owners, the most interesting of whom are the Harris family,
the Maginnis family, and the New Orleans Chapter of the American
Red Cross. The house now spans one and a half centuries of the social
life of New Orleans.
The
Harris Years—1857 To 1879
In 1857 Magnolia Mansion was commissioned by Alexander
Harris as a home for his young bride, Elizabeth “Lizzie”
Johnson Thompson, who was a minor when the marriage license was
signed. Designed by Norfolk architect James H. Calrow that same
year, and built by local contractor William K. Day, the house was
completed in 1858, and likely occupied by end of that year. Calrow
only spent two years in New Orleans, but in 1857 also designed the
nearby residence of ‘vampire novelist’ Anne Rice, located
at 1239 First Street, New Orleans.
Members
of the Harris family had been living in New Orleans at least since
the 1820s. They were principally investment brokers, involved in
the cotton trade. The Harris family descended from Sephardic Jews
originally from Portugal, who had settled in Holland during the
Iberian persecutions, and who had then gone to England. They immigrated
to Charleston, South Carolina and then to Mobile, Alabama, prior
to moving to New Orleans. Alexander Harris bought this Prytania
Street property on 15 July 1857, from Rufus McIlhenny, for $12,000.
According
to present research, there were at least three brothers of Alexander
Harris living here in New Orleans during the mid-nineteenth century:
Aaron, Moses, and Levi. All four brothers were in business together.
New Orleans city directories for the 1850s state that Alexander
also worked with A. M. Nathan & Co., on Canal Street, and current
Harris family members concur that Asher Nathan was Alexander’s
uncle. The mother of Alexander and his brothers was Catherine Nathan,
likewise of Sephardic descent.
In
the summer of 1869, only eleven years after this house was built,
tragedy struck the Harris family. Two of the four brothers died
less than 24 hours apart, likely due to yellow fever, the constant
scourge of Louisiana during the Victorian era. According to 1869
newspaper accounts, Aaron Harris died at home, 35 Bourbon Street,
of ‘congestion of the brain’ at 9:00 PM on Sunday 18
July, and his brother Alexander died at this house of ‘pernicious
fever’ at 6:30 PM the very next day. Funerals for both hapless
brothers were held on Tuesday, the 20th of July, 1869, the first
being at 35 Bourbon Street, at 10 in the morning, and the second
at this house, at 5 o’clock that same night.
The
Harris widows did not get along, Orleans Parish court records show.
Less than four months after the Harris brothers’ deaths, Lizzie
Thompson Harris, mistress of this home and co-executrix of Alexander’s
estate, sued her sister-in-law, Henriette Lynd Harris, executrix
of Aaron’s estate, to recoup $8,400 owed the Harris brothers’
firm which had been lent to Aaron by Alexander. Henriette, who had
five orphaned minor children to support, was forced to take in boarders
at her Bourbon Street home, but had gone steadily deeper into debt
after her husband’s untimely death. Aaron had died insolvent,
whereas Alexander had left an estate worth $200,000. Whatever became
of Henriette and her children, after being forced by foreclosure
from their Bourbon Street abode, is presently unknown.
Shortly
after litigation began, Lizzie allied with another man, Carneal
Burke, who secured a marriage license on 28 July 1871 to marry her.
Orleans Parish Justice of the Peace files contain no Certificate
of the Celebration of Marriage, but the pair did wed, according
to her death notice, published on 13 February 1900.
Within
a few years of becoming Mrs. Burke, Lizzie rid herself of this property
like she rid herself of her sister-in-law. She may have been as
coldhearted to her own children as she had been to Henriette and
her nephews and nieces, because Lizzie did not will or deed this
property to her own issue, but sold the land and house to the Maginnis
family in 1879.
The
Maginnis Years—1879 To 1939
The period that the property was owned by the Maginnis family was
equally dramatic. Ten years after purchase, in 1889, the master
of the house, John Henry Maginnis, was struck by lightning, on no
less auspicious a date than the Fourth of July, when he died.
John
was one of the wealthiest and most highly connected men in the Deep
South at that time. Both he and his older brother Arthur Ambrose
had married daughters of the most powerful politician of New York
City, William Marcy ‘Boss’ Tweed. Thus, the next widow
and owner of this house was Elizabeth Tweed who, as an eerie coincidence,
also was nicknamed ‘Lizzie’, like the first mistress
of the manor. Elizabeth Tweed’s sister, Mary Amelia, wife
of Arthur Ambrose Maginnis, died mysteriously, at age 36, on 17
February 1887.
If
the Harris men were middlemen of the cotton industry, the engine
of Louisiana’s economy in the 1800s, the Maginnis men were
its moguls. Like the Harrises, the Maginnis family had been resident
in New Orleans for a couple of decades prior to the Civil War. Above-cited
Arthur Ambrose began buying up land for the Maginnis Cotton Mill
in 1881. The factory was one of the giants of America, located between
Constance and Annunciation, John Churchill Chase and Poeyfarre Streets
of New Orleans’ Warehouse District. Its original mill building,
fronting on Annunciation Street, still exists. The next city block,
containing the huge factory annex, between Magazine, Constance,
John Churchill Chase and Poeyfarre Streets, was owned by John and
devolved to Lizzie and their three children upon John’s death
by lightning.
A
lot of ink has been spilt in comment on the positive or negative
effects that such a colossal factory had on the overall financial
health or lack of it in the port of New Orleans. At its peak, in
the early 1890s, the Maginnis Cotton Mill employed a thousand workers
- men, women and children. That conditions in such mills were unlike
those that we would allow today goes without question. Some have
even interpreted the lightning strike that slew John Henry Maginnis
as Divine Retribution for the way that the cotton mill treated its
workers.
As
second master of this residence, John was killed at the resort of
Ocean Springs, Mississippi, where he had a summer house. Like Alexander
Harris before him, John’s funeral took place here. His death
certificate states that he was only 44 years and 8 months old. He
left three children by Lizzie: William Tweed Maginnis, John Henry
Maginnis and Mary Josephine Maginnis.
As
a debutante of this house in the early Gay Nineties, John’s
daughter, known as Josephine, was presented fatherless to Society.
She managed splendidly and probably brought this house some of its
happier moments. For over a century, New Orleans debutantes have
featured and still do feature, as Queens of the Mardi Gras krewes,
which provide this city unparalleled amusement, parades, and balls.
In 1892, Josephine was Queen of the Krewe of Argonauts, and in 1893
Queen of the Mistick Krewe of Comus, the krewe of krewes of New
Orleans, whose first parade occurred, coincidentally, in 1857, the
year this house was designed.
In
1892, Josephine was also a Lady of Court for the Queen of Comus,
Varina Anne ‘Winnie’ Davis, daughter of the President
of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis. Winnie, likely an honored guest
at this house, died young (at age 34), as did four of five of President
Davis’s children.
The
krewe parades of the 1890s are legendary highpoints of the Golden
Age of New Orleans float designs. The lush foliage and flowing lines
of the worldwide Art Nouveau movement lent themselves perfectly
to the inspiration required for the mobile masterpieces of the New
Orleans artists then employed by the various krewes. In 1893, when
Josephine Maginnis was Queen of Comus, one of the city’s most
remarkable artists of the medium, Virginia Wilkinson ‘Jennie’
Wilde, was then reaching her stride. Her first Comus pageant had
only occurred two seasons earlier, when she designed the legendary
Demonology parade. Her next series of tableaux, Nippon, The Land
of the Rising Sun, had rolled in 1892, the year Winnie Davis was
Queen. When Josephine Maginnis reigned as Queen of Comus, 1893,
Miss Wilde’s theme was Gustave Flaubert’s novel, Salammbô.
Like so many of her era, Jennie Wilde died tragically young, at
age 48, in England. She is buried in Metairie Cemetery, not too
far from the tomb of John Maginnis.
John’s
bloodline continues to this day, via his daughter Josephine who,
as Queen of Comus, was called ‘a young lady gifted with rare
beauty and queenly grace’ (Daily Picayune, 15 February 1893).
Josephine’s marriage to George Rose of New York City took
place in this house, on 29 April 1896. No descendants of Josephine’s
brothers perpetuate. Josephine’s daughter Gwendolyn married
John Mackay, whose sister Ellen was the wife of songwriter Irving
Berlin.
John’s
widow, Lizzie Tweed, died as he did in Mississippi, in 1921, and
willed this property to Josephine, who retained it until 1939, when
she gave it to the New Orleans Chapter of the American Red Cross.
Josephine and George spent most of their time in New York and Paris,
where he died in 1936. During the 20th century, documentation about
the house is spotty, but a rare photograph of the façade
was taken in the mid-1920s by one of the world’s greatest
photographers, Arnold Genthe, whose famous lens immortalized many
personalities, such as Isadora Duncan at the Parthenon of Athens.
Genthe’s image of 2127 Prytania Street was published in his
book, Impressions of Old New Orleans (Doran, New York, 1926).
The
Red Cross Years—1939 To 1954
It is a strange irony that Red Cross volunteers spent countless
hours here, during World War II and the Korean War, cutting and
hand-rolling bandages made of cotton, the very fiber that provided
funds to Alexander Harris for the home’s erection, and the
very plant that gave Josephine Maginnis money to deck herself out
in Mardi Gras finery as Queen of Comus.
During
the Red Cross period, the house’s true majesty and function
were revealed. Honest good and selfless human endeavor transcended
all the years of calculation and animosity and death which had hitherto
walked this house’s halls. Within this edifice’s walls,
in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, the altruism that has always been
the password of the Red Cross devoted itself to local, national,
and international relief efforts that provided solace to untold
tens of thousands.
Eight
vital programs were carried out inside this building during the
Red Cross era: (1) Disaster Service provided emergency food, clothing,
and shelter; (2) Home Service assisted the United States military
and service-members’ families; (3) Nursing Service taught
classes in homecare for the sick, mothering and baby care; (4) Safety
Service taught First Aid and water safety; (5) Junior Red Cross
guided school children, from first grade through high school; (6)
Hospital Service was aided strictly by volunteers who became Nurses
Aides and was taught by Red Cross Nurses who also coordinated the
volunteer Hospital Gray Ladies who visited military and veterans
hospitals and read to patients; (7) Community Service, a four-part
volunteer program, consisted of (A) Staff Aides, who performed clerical
work and answered telephones, (B) Motor Service, which provided
transportation in station-wagons, (C) Canteen Service, which served
sandwiches and coffee at relief sites from a mobile van and (D)
Production, comprised of ‘little old ladies’ who rolled
bandages, knitted sweaters and made cast-socks for patients at Charity
Hospital and local veterans hospitals; and (8) Public Relations.
In
early 1941, when General Allison Owen was the area’s Red Cross
President, the annual budget for relief handled through this building
was $3,000,000. By V-E Day, 8 May 1945, when the Nazis fell in Europe,
the local Red Cross had been stretched beyond belief. On that fateful
Tuesday in May, The Times-Picayune reported: “A Red Cross
canteen and recreation room for pilots of the Air Transport Command
and wounded service men arriving on hospital planes opened Monday
at the New Orleans Airport.” We should never forget that such
meritorious activities, far beyond this home, were made possible
from this antebellum building.
On
5 December 1954 The Times-Picayune stated: ‘Red Cross Sells
Prytania House’. The edifice-as-office had outgrown the space
requirements of a busy service organization in the modern age. Dr.
Clyde E. Crassons bought the property, and the residence once more
became an esteemed Garden District home.
Lawrence David Moon, who researched, wrote, and edited this brochure,
is a published novelist, published poet, opera composer, and member
of ASCAP.
©
2001 Lawrence David Moon • Published by Édition von
Rapp • All Rights Reserved Worldwide
