Louisiana planter John Perkins and his wife, Mary, built The Briars on property acquired in 1818. Although brick-nogged and vernacular in form, its sophistication indicates a talented designer, such as Levi Weeks, who designed Auburn (ND53). The coved hall ceilings of the two houses are regionally unique. In 1853, Weeks’s daughter Catherine and husband Walter Irving bought the house.
The Briars is a quintessential planter’s cottage of the Lower Mississippi Valley, with its one-and-a-half-story form, a side-gabled roof, a full-width inset front gallery, and a rear loggia flanked by cabinet rooms. But it is more highly finished than most, distinguished by its three fanlit doors, arched dormer windows with tracery, and quarter-round windows with radiating muntins in the gable ends. Interior millwork is as fine as the exterior, and the parlor and dining room mantels are encircled with wreaths and friezes with carved paterae.
From 1828 until 1850, William B. and Margaret Howell rented The Briars. In 1845, in the right front parlor, the Howells’ daughter Varina married Jefferson Davis, later the president of the Confederate States of America. A small brick schoolhouse is the only surviving antebellum outbuilding. Today the house is a bed-and-breakfast inn.