A New Era at Dunleith

A New Era at Dunleith

Natchez's signature mansion reopens, Castle and all

Story by Chris Turner-Neal • Photos by G Douglas Adams

Natchez is one of the South’s queens of the weekend away. Perfectly situated for residents of Baton Rouge, New Orleans, and Jackson—not a long drive, but long enough that you can’t reasonably be expected to go home to deal with something—the little city on the bluff has expertly presented itself as a destination. If New Orleans is the South’s playground, Natchez is one of its bed and breakfasts. One of the key properties in the Natchez tourist infrastructure is Dunleith Historic Inn, under new management and back open for business. Now fresh from a renovation that addressed lingering structural issues in the main house and rejuvenated the restaurant and its environs, Dunleith is ready to offer respite to those needing a break from their everyday. I spent a lovely night at the refreshed Dunleith recently, and I’m looking forward to going back.

I arrived in the late afternoon—I had left work at the shocking hour of 1 pm, hoping to beat both weekend traffic and the promised rains of Tropical Storm Claudette, and enjoyed the cutting-school feeling of being on the road instead of on the clock. After I checked in and dropped off my overnight bag, I hopped onto the golf cart for a quick tour of the property with Lyn Jenkins, assistant general manager and gracious guide.

The core forty acres of land have lasted as a unit since 1796, but the original mansion, Routhland, burned down in 1855 after a lightning strike. The site was sold to Charles Dahlgren, who built a new home with all the fervor of Old South worship of the classical world—to the extent that Dunleith is the only antebellum house in Mississippi fully surrounded by columns. (The columns were among the aspects of the site that needed repair—you can’t tell, which is the mark of an excellent renovation.) The house was sold in 1866—guess why!—and was held by a local bank until its purchase in 1886 by John Neibert Carpenter, the paterfamilias of the Carpenter family. The house remained a private residence for successive generations of Carpenters until its sale in 1976, baffling a subdivision product like me who grew up in a house about nine months older than I was— one can only imagine that the children were not even allowed to learn about grape juice. In 2019, New Orleans hotel group The J Collection purchased Dunleith and began the renovations needed to keep the property competitive in the crowded small luxury hotel space.

In addition to the main house, two well-preserved outbuildings are key parts of the property. Offices occupy the old poultry house, a large (by bird standards) brick structure which was shared by chickens and pigeons; the chickens used little doors at ground level, while the more airworthy pigeons had their own entries higher up. These pigeons weren’t solely destined for the table, as many pigeons were; instead, they acted as messengers, retrieving the all-important price of cotton from exchanges in New Orleans. Outside the poultry house stands a strong candidate for the oldest magnolia in Mississippi. Confirmation of its senior status would require taking a core sample, which could endanger the tree, but even if it’s merely the third or fourth oldest, the branches stretch out to make a fairy cave, cool and thick with the citrusy scent of the tree’s blossoms.

The carriage house hosts the bar and restaurant. Originally, the horses were billeted upstairs, with the downstairs serving as a tack room. Horses, notoriously reluctant stair-climbers, were brought in and out via a wide, gently sloped ramp on one side of the building. Today, this gives the building one of the best wheelchair-accessible entrances I’ve ever seen—one of my favorite dining companions uses a wheelchair, and you’d be amazed by how many steps sometimes separate us from our dinner. The recent renovations added outdoor seating on both levels, multiplying the capacity of the restaurant and allowing patrons to take full advantage of the lovely springs and autumns that are the South’s prize for enduring the summers. A spruced-up pool area behind the restaurant caters to sun worshippers, and a small second bar, repurposed from an event room, offers an alternative to waiting with a drink for a table to open—while there, you can gawk at the Castle’s “cellar,” a colossal wine selection resting in a glass-fronted temperature-controlled case.

Jenkins noted that many people refer to the property as Dunleith Plantation, but this is incorrect: the forty-acre spread and colonnaded mansion were the owners’ place in town. The plantations that generated their wealth lay elsewhere and covered far more than forty acres. This, of course, does not mean that people were not held in slavery at Dunleith, but there’s a clear difference in the atmosphere.

Tourism in the South can be fraught for obvious reasons; I know I’m not alone in occasionally visiting a site and finding the interpretation too wistful for the pre-war order, too elegiac about a system that emphasized near-imperial luxury for a few over the dignity of thousands. Changes in public perceptions of the past will mean changes in how people in the tourist industry—and I include myself and my occasional travel writing—develop sites and experiences, and smaller cities like Natchez whose cultural and historical assets are largely keyed to the antebellum era are having to think creatively about how to use these properties in responsible and appealing ways as the public re-evaluates what it wants from heritage and historical tourism. Taking a more hands-off approach to its history than it once did, Dunleith isn’t selling Scarlett sweeping down the staircase or Bette Davis’s Jezebel flouncing in a pile of skirts. You’re not stepping back in time here; you’re stepping into well-appointed and air-conditioned rooms with convenient access to an excellent restaurant.

G Douglas Adams

Visitors can stay in the house or the dependency, a word I learned shortly after I was told my room was in the dependency. Normal houses have add-ons; especially old or attractive houses have dependencies. Guest rooms in the main house are furnished with period-correct furniture, preserving the unity of the look. Dependency rooms have more modern furniture, but are still excellently cozy, and my room was stocked with two shelves of hardbacks for perusal. (I chose to believe these operated on the same rule as hotel soaps and purloined a historical novel about the settlement of Iceland.) Heavy curtains fostered a good dark cave for my afternoon nap—I hate to go to dinner without being rested— and a king-sized bed was perfect for a dozy sprawl.

Belted into my one pair of long pants that still fits (at this writing, at least), I made my way over to the carriage house for dinner and a drink. The Castle Pub offers an English pub aesthetic. Drinkers can order from a bar menu or from the upstairs restaurant, but I was anxious to have the full Castle experience, so after a martini I went upstairs and was seated in a cozy corner, perfect for people-watching across the crowded room.

“Oh, I’ll have some wine with dinner,” I thought, and ordered the house pinot. It came, to my admitted delight, in a big glass, somewhere between a dare and a treat: “Look, it’s technically one glass.” (I had two, of course.) The menu was the right size, which is a sincere compliment: too many options feels like a diner, and too few always involves a feeling of compromise—a menu should be a journey, not a pit stop. Chef Doug Hosford has curated a menu that offers the right amount of sweet indecision. I knew what I wanted, and I also knew what I would want someone eating with me to get and let me sample. Because I was going to write about the restaurant, I had to get an appetizer (how I sacrifice myself for my art), and after a pleasant period of starter-main matchmaking I settled on corn and catfish chowder and duck carbonara.

G Douglas Adams

The chowder was among the best I’ve ever had, and I have been to New England and consider myself a chowder enthusiast. (Country Roads wouldn’t put it on my business cards.) In the grand scheme of soups, a chowder should be rich but not heavy, smack-dab between a bisque and a bouillabaisse: good sweet corn, mild but flavorful catfish, and plenty of each, all in a perfectly seasoned stock. I tilted the bowl unabashedly to get the last spoonfuls and would have done so in front of the Queen. If she’d had the chowder too, she would have understood.

The waiter managed to pull the bowl away from me so he could put down the duck carbonara. Fat strips of perfectly cooked meat rested on top of a justright portion of pasta, accompanied by sugar snap peas. The duck had the ideal crisp skin and little layer of fat along the meat, as well as the right texture—most people reasonably overcook poultry a little because we’re so used to not giving our friends salmonella with chicken, and slightly overdone poultry is still generally perfectly good, but the softer texture of a just-done bird is a delight. It was easy to pace myself with the meat because the pasta was also delicious, glossy and gently creamy—pleasantly light, to the extent that carbohydrates can be light. (I subsequently learned that carbonara sauce is made by adding a raw egg mixture to freshly made noodles and letting the heat from the noodles cook the sauce, which impressed me further.) The snap peas added a brisk, fresh crunch and some vegetal depth to the dish.

Duty-bound to order a dessert, I chose a berry freeze—not frozen itself, but named for the freeze-dried and crushed berries that topped the whipped cream that topped the crème anglaise that topped a cheesecake-like central goody. Aided by another tureen of wine, I savored it all as I idly eavesdropped on the table of ladies to my right. To my amazement, as they stood to leave one of them turned to speak to me, telling me she was pleased the restaurant would be in Country Roads—she recognized me and followed the magazine. I’d never been recognized by a stranger before, largely because I am not actually famous, but I was thrilled, if a bit unnerved (where did she recognize me from, and what had I been doing?). Swollen with pride and a good meal, I waddled the hundred yards back to the dependency—I used the ramp to leave the restaurant, as it seemed wisest—and slept like a stone.

G Douglas Adams

On my golf cart tour, I’d asked Jenkins if Dunleith had run into problems during COVID—were people reluctant to get back out there? She was pleased to tell me they were doing well. The timeline of the renovations meant that the property was ready for visitors more or less at the same time visitors were ready for it, and so they’ve enjoyed ample reservations and full tables as Natchezians and weekenders have reemerged into the world. They’re looking ahead, too, at developing the remainder of the forty acres to offer more outdoor amenities like walking trails. By all appearances, Dunleith has some happy years ahead of it— be sure to share them.

dunleithhistoricinn.com