HM-style plantation houses

[Datameister]

Okay, I swear this is Disneyland related. I was wondering where I could find information on the type of architecture used for DL's Haunted Mansion. I know it's fashioned after 19th-century plantation houses, but does anyone have information on this style of architecture? Everything from photos of real houses to floor plans to historical texts...whatever. I'm trying to construct a floor plan of what the Haunted Mansion would look like in "real life." I can't use the ride's layout TOO literally, since its track design doesn't give the mansion a very realistic layout. Rather, I want to figure out what the mansion's layout would probably be like if it really existed somewhere.

Anyway, any information and/or photos would be awesome...thanks...

[Aura of Foreboding]

Visit Doombuggies for all the info that you need about the Haunted Mansion. The book, The Haunted Mansion: From the Magic Kingdom to the Movies is also a good source. As for your specific request, the architecture was done in Greek Revival and the house was based off of Evergreen House on the Johns Hopkins University site.

I hope that those two sites will be able to start you off. Good luck on your project!

[MiceMan]

Another house you may want to look into is the Lee House in Arlington National Cemetery

[Steak]

A quick trip to Savannah Georgia would probably give you several ideas on this style.

[thejoshualee]

OR... (less scientific but more fun) look at the house in the movie "Skeleton Key" is it just me or should that have been the haunted mansion movie? Am I right folks?

[Datameister]

Thanks for your help, guys. Doombuggies has been essential to all my Haunted Mansion wants and needs for a year now, and the other links you provided were helpful.

The main thing I'm curious about is the layout of the rooms. As I stated before, I want to design fictional floor plans for the Haunted Mansion, as it would appear if the rooms were inside the actual mansion and not inside the show building, outside the berm. I'm wondering particularly about the placement of the ballroom. In a Greek Revival plantation house, where would a ballroom/dining hall typically be placed?

Thanks for your help on this rather esoteric topic.

[MiceMan]

OR... (less scientific but more fun) look at the house in the movie "Skeleton Key" is it just me or should that have been the haunted mansion movie? Am I right folks?

Holy Hellfire I watched that yesterday and DAAAYMN ... scared the HooDoo outta me!

[Not Afraid]

Lots of books on the subject.


http://www.miketectonpublishing.com/

http://www.beehivepress.org/beehive/...antations.html

There must be information about the myriad of plantations outside of New Orleans or Natchez. The style was all overplace in the pre-Civil War South.

[Gregor]

Look up the American architectural period known as "Antebellum". This was period just before the civil war. Antebellum isn't so much an individual house style as an architectural time and place. Antebellum homes are essentially in the Greek Revival, Classical Revival, or Federal style: grand, symmetrical, and boxy, with center entrances in the front and rear, balconies, and columns or pillars.

[Morrigoon]

Also look up the New Orleans Garden District

[stinkerbell]

Test. I keep trying to reply to this thread and MC freezes.....

[stinkerbell]

Steak said to go to Savannah.

:sigh: Amen. That was going to be my suggestion. Southern Gothic at its most haunting. :sigh:

When I lived in North Carolina, we used to do weekend trips to tour all sorts of old antebellum plantation homes. My parents looooved them, and I was Gone with the Wind obsessed. Before I was born in New Orleans, my parents lived in Tennessee and Mississippi for a short time. They hated both so much that the only way to make living there palatable was to tour all the homes they could. We have photo albums full of pictures.

Google will be your very best friend. Search Greek Revival (specifically antebellum), southern plantation homes, mississippi antebellum plantation, tennessee greek revival homes, New Orleans antebellum, etc. Any combo should give you hundreds of good sites. There are some books you can get at the library that have actual floorplans.

Here are some antebellum architecture links:

http://architecture.about.com/library/bl-antebellum.htm

http://www.natchezpilgrimage.com/houses.htm

Monmouth was the only house I can remember from being there when I was 12. I'd love to go back and see it as an adult.

A book on the homes of Mississippi:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...glance&s=books

Louisiana homes:

http://ccet.louisiana.edu/03a_Cultur...lum_Homes.html

Another book:

http://www.longitudebooks.com/find/p/11618/mcms.html

We have that one in our public library, it's freaking gorgeous. My mom had a calendar based on some of the photos a few years ago.

Oh, my heart aches. My oldest friend is getting married in Savannah in October and now I'm dying on the inside to go. Ouch.

Have fun researching!!

[speederscout]

Very cool project. I've done a few similar.

However, you have to take a different approach than you're currently on. First of all, you're on the right track by realizing that your rooms need to fit in the actual mansion rather than the show building. The next step is realizing that those rooms will never fit in the actual mansion. Soooo, you have to decide if you'd rather adjust the rooms to fit your mansion, or adjust your mansion to fit the rooms. Besides the rooms we see on the ride, do you have a list of other rooms that you'd find in such a house? And do you have the dimensions of the building, in order to know how much space you actually have? After you've got those things its a matter of compromise and creativity.

I've actually thought about tackling this project myself. Let me know how it goes, or if you'd like a cohort. I'm considering building a model of the House of the Future, myself.

[Datameister]

Thanks for the resources, guys! Very helpful indeed.

Speederscout, I found your post very interesting. I was already pondering the same dilemma myself--what do I want to compromise most? First of all, I'm thinking that my Mansion will definitely be bigger than the facade at DL. That facade is definitely not as big as the "real" Haunted Mansion would have to be. I intend to keep the architecture basically the same, so it's still recognizable. I'm using the HM movie's mansion as inspiration--that's a little closer to how the "real" mansion would probably look, although I want to keep my version very, very similar to the version in the park.

I've thought about what rooms to include, both those featured in the ride and those never seen. The following areas will have to be included (bold items included in the ride):

• Foyer
• Stretching gallery (portrait hall)
• Portrait gallery (bottom floor)
• Corridor of doors
• Conservatory
• Endless hallway
• Seance room
• Ballroom/dining hall
• Attic
• Library
• Two parlors (one is the piano parlor)
• All rooms that connect to the corridor of doors
• Guest rooms (2 or 3)
• Kitchen
• Bathrooms (gotta play up the toilet angle )
• Master bedroom
• A few more bedrooms
• A nursery

I think I've made a decision. I'm not going to include the loading area/limbo in my mansion, because I think it's not a literal location in the house. Rather, I think the guest experiences the Ghost Host's death in the stretching gallery, and the loading area symbolizes the transition from death into the tour of the manor--as a spirit. When you enter your Doom Buggie, you are now experiencing what the Ghost Host experienced at death. I think that could work.

I've decided to include WDW's library and piano parlor. I want to keep this as much of a pure Disneyland project as possible, but both of these rooms need to be in the mansion, anyway. I may as well go off of what Disney already made.

The trick to this is getting the mansion big enough. By nature, the Haunted Mansion always seems to have one more room around the next corner, as if you could never explore the whole house without missing something, even if you know the whole track layout by heart. What I'm doing, by nature, diminishes that feeling because I'm trying to define exactly what goes where.

Of course, the haunted nature of the manor gives me the ability to say "Well, on Wednesdays and Fridays, there's a secret passageway right here, but that doesn't show up in the floor plan."

[Aura of Foreboding]

Just by my knowledge of the subject matter, I believe that the ballroom would be at the very back of the house. I mean, look at those large windows. Logic would say that it is in the back of the house. It really couldn't be at the side. I believe it was at the rear of the house in the Mansion movie as well.