5 Things You Might Not Know about the Shadows-on-the-Teche
A new exhibition at this National Trust Historic Site fully incorporates the lives of enslaved and free people alongside the Weeks family.
The Shadows-on-the-Teche is nestled in the heart of downtown New Iberia, Louisiana. Built between 1831 and 1834 as the townhome for David and Mary Weeks, who established a sprawling 2,000-acre sugar plantation 15 miles away on the Gulf Coast at Grand Cote (Weeks Island).
In 2023, the museum launched a new tour experience that fully incorporates the lives of enslaved and free people alongside the Weeks family. To help tell a more complete story, The Shadows also opened new exhibits that cover of the founding of the Weeks family plantations, center the lives and experiences of enslaved people, the impact of the Civil War on Iberia Parish, and explore the violent history of Jim Crow.
photo by: Shadows-on-the-Teche
The Shadows in 1923 surrounded by Hall’s jungle-like gardens. From the Collection of The Shadows-on-the-Teche.
The Lighter Side to Life exhibit looks at Weeks Hall's life, the final Weeks family member to own The Shadows. Weeks Hall was a queer artist and socialite who surrounded himself with some of the most prominent people of his time. Walt Disney, Elia Kazan, Henry Miller, Cecil DeMille, Mae West, and D.W. Griffith all found their way to The Shadows.
Swiss Guard exhibit shows the impact of five of Hall’s longest-serving employees who diligently worked the gardens and preserved The Shadows. Weeks Hall often referred to The Shadows as his Vatican, himself as the Pope, and the staff as his Swiss Guard. One such member, Clement Knatt, joined the staff at The Shadows in 1945 and continued working after Hall’s death in 1958. Knatt retired from the National Trust for Historic Preservation in 1993 after working 48 years at The Shadows.
The innovative storytelling on tours and through exhibits allows visitors to experience a more complete history of The Shadows, Iberia Parish, and connect deeply to larger state and national historical trends. To dig into this history we've pulled together five facts you might not know about this National Trust Historic Site.
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1. The Weeks family, who built The Shadows, lived in the home for four generations from its construction in 1834 until 1958.
The Shadows was built in 1834 by David and Mary Weeks. Part of a large sugar enterprise, the Weeks family enslaved around 200 people at Grand Cote and 25 at The Shadows. Mary and David had five children who lived to adulthood. Their oldest son, William Frederick Weeks, inherited The Shadows as his home during the Civil War. Following the war, he restarted the sugar plantation with many of the free men and women who were previously enslaved on Grand Cote.
The Weeks family used predatory labor contracts to trap free African Americans in dangerous working conditions, cycles of debt, and low wages. William Frederick’s daughters, Lilly and Harriet, expanded the family business into mining salt in the 1890s. After a devastating fire in 1918, the Weeks family sold Grand Cote (Weeks Island), and the 100-year family-run sugar operation ended.
2. By the time of the Civil War, the Weeks family owned nine plantations across Louisiana and enslaved 1,112 people.
Enslaved men, women, and children made up the vast majority of the population of South Louisiana. Their labor fueled the expansive wealth of the sugar economy. A Picture, Unbroken, an exhibit at The Shadows that opened in 2024 features an emotionally moving memorial to the 1,112 people enslaved by members of the Weeks family across Louisiana.
A centerpiece is a wall that includes around 700 names of enslaved people that researchers have identified. In addition to the memorial, the exhibit explores the lives of enslaved people outside of labor. One small artifact, a clay marble discovered during an archaeology dig at the site of the slave quarters, reveals child’s play in the quarters and reinforces the fact that enslaved families developed deep familial ties within a greater enslaved society.
photo by: Shadows-on-the-Teche
Formerly enslaved contract laborers at the Weeks Island sugar mill in the 1870s. Many of the people enslaved on Weeks Island labored under unfair contracts in the decades following the Civil War. Colorized 2023.
3. Weeks Hall was a queer artist and socialite who dedicated his life to the preservation of The Shadows.
photo by: Shadows-on-the-Teche
Weeks Hall along with Richard Koch, a queer architect from New Orleans, were central figures in the Dixie Bohemian movement that helped preserve both The Shadows and New Orlean’s French Quarter.
Weeks Hall was the fourth and last generation of the Weeks family to call The Shadows home. Born in 1894, he attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and received scholarships to study in Paris, France. Hall discovered a Paris where writers, painters, and musicians thrived in cafes and studios. He embraced that Parisian bohemian life centered on artistic freedom, intellectual fervor, and unconventional living.
He returned to New Orleans in 1919 and became a member of ‘Dixie Bohemia,’ a group of queer men and women who lived a bohemian lifestyle in New Orleans that centered on art, culture, and historic preservation. Hall and his bohemian friends helped to preserve the historic French Quarter neighborhood in New Orleans, dozens of homes, and The Shadows.
Weeks Hall spent four decades at The Shadows and opened his home to a host of artists and celebrities. He was both a prominent member of Louisiana’s social scene and an outsider delicately navigating social circles and the hidden world of queer Louisiana.
4. At The Shadows, the tour experience is dialogic, meaning we have conversations with visitors.
photo by: Shadows-on-the-Teche
The Shadows opened new exhibits in July 2024. The opening celebration welcomed 85 members.
We have thrown out traditional tour scripts. We don’t want to talk at you for an hour. Instead, we want to invite visitors into a conversation about the past. The interests of our visitors guide each tour. This tour style allows us to confront the highs, lows, and ugly parts of the history of this plantation and the history of the institution of slavery. We also connect the experiences at The Shadows to larger historical trends like the American Civil War, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, the Great Migration, and even the queer preservation movement. At The Shadows, visitors help craft their own experiences around their historical interests.
5. The Shadows has a nearly complete historical record that spans two centuries of Louisiana history.
View of one of the center panels at the new exhibit at The Shadows. This panel includes the names of over 700 individuals enslaved by the Weeks family that were identified by researchers.
photo by: Shadows-on-the-Teche
Charity, pictured in the 1880s, was enslaved by the Weeks family for more than four decades. After the Civil War, she settled in Iberia Parish with her grandchildren. Charity’s story is central to the new visitor experience. Colorized 2023.
During his lifetime, Weeks Hall was determined that The Shadows would become a museum. He gave the home to the National Trust for Historic Preservation with more than 17,000 historical documents, now housed at Louisiana State University Special Collections, and thousands of objects owned by all four generations of the Weeks family.
From this collection, we learn about 19th-century business, family life, healthcare, foodways, politics, education, and derive stories of the hundreds of enslaved people who lived and worked at The Shadows and Grand Cote. Through this collection, we can tell a more complete story of the history of the Shadows, Iberia Parish, and Louisiana.
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