Southern Garden History Society

Longue Vue South Portico and Spanish Court.” Credit: Longue Vue House and Gardens

Longue Vue ranks among the truly stellar gardens of the American South, representing a crowning achievement of landscape architect Ellen Biddle Shipman. Society members toured this National Historic Landmark site during our May 2004 New Orleans annual meeting, having been introduced to the property through a talk by Shipman scholar Judith Tankard. (Her book The Gardens of Ellen Biddle Shipman offers an excellent summary of the Longue Vue project.) Key to knowing how Longue Vue came about is understanding the relationship that flourished between Shipman and its owners, Sears heiress Edith Stern and her cotton broker husband, Edgar. It was a connection lasting from 1935 to 1950 and relating not only to the landscape but also to building an entirely new house designed by Shipman in collaboration with architects William and Jeffrey Platt and showing a strongly Palladian influence. (The Platts’ father, Charles, had mentored Shipman during the early days of her career while a member of the Cornish colony in New Hampshire.)

Described by landscape historian Mac Griswold (Golden Age of American Gardens) as “grandly Beaux-Arts in scale and feeling though it comprises only 8 acres,” Longue Vue perfectly blends the monumental and the intimate. The imposing entry drive immediately sets the visitor in the grand side of this equation, framing the west portico with rows of live oaks. Equally monumental are the portico garden and south lawn, with its long grass panel flanked by parterres and pierced brick walls. These features, in turn, culminate in a rectangular pool with myriad water jets and a shady semi-circular logia (a 1960s Spanish-influenced change from the original design).

The more intimate sections of Longue Vue can be enjoyed in the canal garden, walled garden, and wild garden, among other spots. Known for its Louisiana Iris collection, the wild garden is especially significant to landscape historians for the work done there by Louisiana botanist Caroline Dormon, who has been singled out for attention in multiple issues of Magnolia. Our links will provide further details, but as this brief sketch should underscore, time at Longue Vue is time well spent during any visit to New Orleans.

(Through tremendous dedication and strenuous labors, Longue Vue made a remarkable recovery from the 2005 ravages of Hurricane Katrina. For more on the storm’s impact, see: https://southerngardenhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Magnolia_Fall_2005.pdf#page=1)