Shadows-on-the-Teche
A National Trust property combines a Greek Revival house, Bayou Teche garden, and unusually rich family papers with histories of slavery, war, and preservation.
Artwork inspired by George Rodrigue
Built for sugar planter David Weeks and his wife Mary, the house is supported by a large archive of letters and plantation records. That documentation allows interpretation to move beyond furniture toward family relationships, commerce, slavery, wartime occupation, and the labor that maintained both plantation wealth and the urban residence. The building’s survival is only one layer of the story.
Guided tours control interior access, so reserve a time and arrive ready to listen rather than self-navigate. Outside, compare the formal garden with Bayou Teche’s working waterfront and the dense modern city around it. Ask how preservation choices changed over time and which people appear only indirectly in the Weeks papers; an abundant owner archive still requires reading against its silences.
- Built
- 1831–1834
- Evidence
- Weeks family archive
- Plan for
- 1½–2 hours
Quick guide
- Reserve
- Guided house tour
- Outside
- Garden axis to Bayou Teche
Make the visit count
- Use letters critically
- Notice whose voice survives directly and whose life must be reconstructed from accounts or owner correspondence.
- Connect house and sugar
- Set beside it the urban residence and plantation economy were financially and socially inseparable.
- Read the garden as work
- Read planting, drainage, pruning, and display depended on skilled labor through changing periods.
- Look beyond columns
- Bayou access, service circulation, and room use explain more than the façade alone for Shadows-on-the-Teche Guided-tour schedule varies by day and season.
Good to know
Interior entry is by guided tour, and the historic house has stairs and constrained rooms. The site sits in downtown New Iberia rather than on an isolated plantation landscape; confirm tour times, accessibility alternatives, and garden conditions before arriving during heat or heavy rain.
Notice these
- Weeks family papers
- Bayou Teche garden
- Greek Revival interior