Beauvoir Will Reopen With Celebration On Davis’ June 3 Birthday
By Kathryn Jorgensen

BILOXI, Miss. – “If he came back to visit today it would look the same as when he left,” declares Rick Forte Sr. about Beauvoir, the home where Confederate President Jefferson Davis lived the last 12 years of his life.

Beauvoir is gorgeous. “It looks the best it has since the day it was built,” Forte says of the home that will open on June 3 for the first time since Hurricane Katrina struck on Aug. 29, 2005.

Forte is chairman of the combined boards and acting director of the historic property.

The grand reopening celebration, on the 200th anniversary of Davis’ birth, will begin at 10 a.m. Forte invites people to come down and enjoy the speakers, period bands, reenactors, cannon salute, musket salute, birthday cake and “you name it.”

Few would have guessed such a restoration was possible in the days after Katrina. There were even reports that the house could not be restored.

When the U-shaped porch was ripped off, along with columns, railings and bricks, some of the roof went with it, exposing the front parlor and Winnie’s room. Water surged through the lower level of the home, a raised cottage that was built on brick piers that had been enclosed over the years.

Beauvoir is both a National and Mississippi Historic Landmark. It is one of only two historic structures on the Mississippi Gulf Coast that survived the hurricane. The restoration was done with the help of insurance, grant money from the Mississippi Department of Archives and History and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which provided $4 million.

Forte says the only work that will not be complete for the opening is the hand painting of frescoes that decorated the hall, front parlor and library walls.

The frescoes, which include geometric patterns and bowls of flowers and Greek mythological figures, were last painted in 1978. This time specialists studied the layers of paint and determined the original colors, which will be restored.

Furniture has been moved back into the four family bedrooms and the dining room and children’s dining room. The pieces, many from the Davis family, were conserved after surviving the hurricane. Damaged drapes, curtains and carpeting were replaced with replicas.

Katrina devastated the 52 acres of grounds and all but destroyed the Jefferson Davis Presidential Library which opened in 1998. Its remains will be demolished.

In order to meet federal flood plain requirements and get insurance, a new library and museum will be built on a site 40 yards west when FEMA approves the design. Offices will be on the ground floor and the museum and library on the upper floor.

The hurricane also destroyed the Hayes Cottage, the Library Pavilion where Davis worked, and the cistern. Construction of the cottage and library will be completed in August. The cistern, which caught roof rainwater, will also be rebuilt. The destroyed hospital museum building will not be replaced.

Trees are continually dying “mostly because the salt water was higher than 10 feet and it didn’t rain for two months,” Forte explains. Native plants and shrubs were planted after the grounds were cleaned up and dead trees and stumps have been removed.

The Mississippi Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans has owned the property for over a century. For more than 50 years, until 1957, Confederate veterans and their spouses lived at Beauvoir. More than 700 of them are buried on the grounds.

The Sons aim to raise a $20 million endowment. “In case of another hurricane we can move immediately and not wait a year and a half like we had to do,” Forte says, and interest earnings could fund work around Beauvoir.

Tourism provides most of the income and that dropped after 911. Forte says there still aren’t a lot of tourists along the coast.

People who do visit will find two trailers housing the gift shop (also available on line) and a small museum showing rescued artifacts. The grounds cannot be opened to visitors for now because of the ongoing construction.

Beauvoir is open from 9 to 4, Monday through Friday. For more information go to www.beauvoir.org