Longwood (Natchez, Mississippi)

Longwood, also known as Nutt's Folly, is an antebellum octagonal mansion at 140 Lower Woodville Road in Natchez, Mississippi, and the largest octagonal house in the United States. The cotton planter Haller Nutt commissioned it from the Philadelphia architect Samuel Sloan, and construction ran from 1859 until about 1864 without ever being finished: the Pennsylvania craftsmen building it left in 1861 to join the Union Army at the outbreak of the Civil War, and Nutt died of pneumonia in 1864. The house has a distinctive octagonal plan topped by a Byzantine style onion dome, with nine finished rooms in the basement level and its upper floors left permanently unfinished under the terms of its deed. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and designated a National Historic Landmark, and operates year round as a house museum run by the Pilgrimage Garden Club.