Declared a National Historic Landmark in 1974, the Metoyer Plantation, also known as Yucca Plantation and Melrose Plantation, is one of the largest plantations in the United States built by and for free people of color. It was established in 1796 by Louis Metoyer, the third child of Marie Therese Coin-Coin, an enslaved African American, and Claude Thomas Pierre Metoyer, a young French merchant who began a relationship with Coin-Coin in 1767 after leasing her as a house servant from the household of St. Denis, founder of the Natchitoches settlement; over 17 years they had ten children. In 1796 Louis Metoyer was granted and acquired a core tract of 911 acres, and under his leadership, with the help of enslaved workers, he became a wealthy farmer and businessman. After establishing the Yucca House and the Barn in the early 1800s, he began construction on the Big House in 1830 and hired Seraphin Llorens as builder; when Louis died in 1832, his son Jean Baptiste Louis oversaw its completion in 1833. After Jean Baptiste Louis died in 1838, his estate, valued at $112,761, was divided between his widow and an underage son, but the Financial Panic of 1837 drove them into debt and creditors filed lawsuits. In 1847 the French Creole brothers Hypolite and Henry Hertzog purchased the property for $8,340 as agents for their sister Jeanne Fanny Hertzog Bossier, and Fanny and her brothers operated it as a cotton plantation. Living in the house in 1855, Fanny enclosed the side porches and lower-level basement to create more living space, and she is credited with starting the first Freed-man school on the property. In 1881 Reconstruction pressures forced the Hertzogs into debt, and the Metoyer-Hertzog property was sold to F. R. Cauranneau of New Orleans, who never lived there and in April 1884 sold the estate for $4,500 cash to Irish immigrant Joseph Henry, who renamed it Melrose. When Joseph Henry died in 1899, his son John Hampton Henry and daughter-in-law Carmelite "Cammie" Garrett Henry inherited the property, and Miss Cammie undertook an extensive restoration, adding hexagonal garçonnière towers to each end of the Big House gallery as well as her bedroom, an indoor kitchen with pantry, and a sunroom to the rear. The Big House reflects French Colonial architectural practices, with symmetrical styling, cypress timber frames inserted directly into the soil, bousillage walls of clay, moss, and other fibrous infill between half-timbered framing, a raised plantation house above a basement, an outdoor staircase to the upper level, a stone fireplace dividing two small rooms, a wrap-around galerie porch, raised ceilings to ease heat, and an open-walled basement originally used for wagon storage and to protect living quarters from flooding.