Largest House in Mississippi: 8 Grand Mansions Ranked by Size

Mississippi is home to some of the Largest Houses in Mississippi, showcasing the grandeur of the American South. Longwood in Natchez, a 30,000-square-foot octagonal mansion, remains the largest standing home, while the Windsor Ruins near Port Gibson recall an even grander estate built during the state’s cotton boom.

The biggest house here is Longwood, spanning roughly 30,000 square feet across six floors in Natchez. Designed for cotton planter Haller Nutt, it dwarfs every other standing property, including Stanton Hall, on this entire list.

If you enjoy homes like Largest House in Mississippi as much as I do, you’ll want to explore more of what we cover on rivon home, where I write about design, architecture, and everything that makes a house worth talking about.

Largest House in Mississippi: Quick Facts

The largest house in Mississippi still standing is Longwood, in the Natchez On-Top-of-the-Hill area. Construction started in 1860 and was never finished, making it the single most recognizable mansion in the state.

Haller Nutt, a cotton planter, and his wife Julia commissioned the octagonal mansion just before the American Civil War halted construction almost overnight. Only nine basement rooms were ever completed, and the family lived out their lives in them while the upper floors sat bare.

Inside Largest Houses in Mississipp Longwood: Interior and Other Features

As someone who has spent years studying materials, proportions, and craftsmanship, I can tell you this house was never meant to be ordinary, even unfinished.

• A byzantine onion-shaped dome crowning the sixth floor
• Double exterior walls 27 inches thick with a 5-inch air gap for ventilation
• Rooftop rainwater collection designed to feed running water into the home
• Nine finished basement rooms where the Nutt family lived for decades
• Original 1860s tools and packing crates still left on the unfinished floors
• 115 planned doors and 96 planned columns across the full design
• A rooftop dome once damaged by storms, later restored with a new finial in 1993

Every unfinished floor above the basement tells the same story: tools dropped mid-task, walls left bare, and a house frozen the moment the Civil War began. This remarkable landmark remains one of the Largest Houses in Mississippi, preserved exactly as history left it. Unlike many of the Largest Houses in Mississippi, it stopped mid-sentence and never started again. Today, the Largest Houses in Mississippi continue to tell powerful stories of ambition, conflict, and resilience.

Where Are These Largest Houses in Mississippi Located?

These eight Largest Houses in Mississippi span three parts of the state. Longwood, Stanton Hall, Melrose, Dunleith, Auburn, and Rosalie all sit in or around Natchez, overlooking the Mississippi River. Windsor Ruins sits further north in Claiborne County, near Alcorn State University. Beauvoir is the outlier, sitting on the Gulf Coast in Biloxi.

My Personal Tour of the Largest House in Mississippi

As Stefano Schiavon from RivonHome, touring these remarkable Largest Houses in Mississippgave me a deep appreciation for their unique character. From an unfinished dome at Longwood to a freestanding staircase at Auburn and a Gulf-facing porch at Beauvoir, each residence reflected exceptional craftsmanship and real ambition.

What impressed me most was that every Largest Houses in Mississipp had its own personality, proving that true grandeur is created through timeless architecture, careful proportion, and a story worth preserving, not just square footage.

7 More of the Largest Houses in Mississippi

The Longwood mansion holds the record for the Largest Houses in Mississipp today. But if you widen the lens to the whole state, and count the ruins of a home that no longer exists, a few other properties are just as impressive.

1. Windsor Ruins, Claiborne County — The Largest Houses in Mississipp Ever Built

• Location: Off Route 552, about 10 miles southwest of Port Gibson
• Size: ~17,000 square feet at completion
• Status: Ruins, 23 standing Corinthian columns remain

This is technically the largest house Mississippi ever produced, though nothing but columns remain today. Cotton planter Smith Coffee Daniell II finished the five-story home in early 1861, just weeks before his own death. A dropped cigarette ash started a fire in 1890 that burned the entire mansion to the ground, leaving only its 23 towering columns standing in an open field.

2. Stanton Hall, Natchez — $83,000 to Build

• Location: 401 High Street, Natchez, occupying a full city block
• Size: ~14,000 square feet
• Status: Standing, museum operated by the Pilgrimage Garden Club

Built for cotton merchant Frederick Stanton between 1851 and 1857, this Greek Revival mansion cost roughly $83,000 to construct, an enormous sum for the era. As one of the Largest Houses in Mississippi, it features four colossal Corinthian columns, 17-foot ceilings, and imported French mirrors that still greet visitors as they did in the 1850s.

3. Melrose, Natchez — 80 Acres of Original Grounds

• Location: 1 Melrose Montebello Parkway, Natchez
• Size: ~15,000 square feet
• Status: Standing, part of Natchez National Historical Park

Built in the 1840s for lawyer John T. McMurran, Melrose is often called the best-preserved of the group because later owners kept the original furniture instead of replacing it. The National Park Service purchased the 80-acre estate in 1990, and it now operates as part of Natchez National Historical Park.

4. Dunleith, Natchez — Mississippi’s Only Fully Columned Mansion

• Location: 84 Homochitto Street, Natchez
• Size: 12-room main house on a 40-acre estate
• Status: Standing, operated as a historic inn

Dunleith is the only antebellum house in Mississippi completely surrounded by columns, 26 of them, wrapping both floors. Built in 1856 after fire destroyed an earlier home on the site, it now includes a carriage house, dairy barn, and one of the oldest magnolia trees in the state.

5. Auburn, Natchez — The House That Started the Trend

• Location: 400 Duncan Avenue, Natchez, inside Duncan Park
• Size: 12-room mansion on 203 acres
• Status: Standing, house museum

Built in 1812 by architect Levi Weeks, Auburn was the first home in the Mississippi territory to use real Classical architecture. Its two-story portico became the model that every grand mansion after it tried to copy, and its interior hides a freestanding spiral staircase with no center support.

6. Rosalie Mansion, Natchez — The Blueprint for Natchez Style

• Location: 100 Orleans Street, Natchez, on the river bluff
• Size: 3-story brick house on 22 original acres
• Status: Standing, owned by the Daughters of the American Revolution

Built in 1823 for planter Peter Little, Rosalie’s cube-shaped design and Tuscan columns became the template that later Natchez mansions borrowed for the next forty years. During the Civil War, Union General Ulysses S. Grant used it as his headquarters.

7. Beauvoir, Biloxi — Jefferson Davis’s Home on the Gulf

• Location: 2244 Beach Boulevard, Biloxi
• Size: Raised cottage-style home on a 52 to 60-acre estate
• Status: Standing, restored after Hurricane Katrina

Planter James Brown built this raised cottage-style home around 1852, and Confederate President Jefferson Davis bought it in 1879, living there until he died in 1889. Today, it is recognized among the Largest Houses in Mississippi. Although Hurricane Katrina severely damaged the mansion in 2005, a full restoration brought this historic landmark back to life when it reopened in 2008.

Comparing All 8 Largest Houses in Mississippi by Size

Among the Largest Houses in Mississippi, Windsor was the biggest but no longer stands. Longwood is the largest surviving mansion, though it was never finished. Melrose and Stanton Hall follow closely in size, while Dunleith, Auburn, and Rosalie offer rich historical significance, and Beauvoir is celebrated more for its legacy than its footprint.

Any Recent News on These Largest Houses in Mississippi?

Preservation efforts continue to protect the Largest Houses in Mississippi. Windsor Ruins was recently 3D scanned to create a detailed digital record and replicas of its iconic columns for future restoration. Dunleith reopened after a major renovation under new ownership, while Beauvoir continues expanding its presidential library. Longwood, Stanton Hall, Melrose, Auburn, and Rosalie remain open for guided tours, with Natchez’s popular spring and fall Pilgrimage seasons attracting thousands of visitors each year.

Who Owns the Largest Houses in Mississippi Today?

A handful of preservation groups and organizations maintain these homes rather than private families:

• Pilgrimage Garden Club — Owns and operates Longwood and Stanton Hall as house museums
• National Park Service — Owns Melrose as part of Natchez National Historical Park
• The J Collection — Purchased and renovated Dunleith, now run as a luxury inn
• Daughters of the American Revolution — Has owned and maintained Rosalie since 1938
• Mississippi Department of Archives and History — Administers the Windsor Ruins site
• Sons of Confederate Veterans — Maintains Beauvoir and its presidential library

None of these mansions have a single private owner living inside full time anymore. This is common for homes this size; the upkeep on a 15,000 to 30,000-square-foot antebellum mansion is simply too much for one family to carry alone today.

What Makes These Houses in Mississippi So Large?

After studying buildings for most of my career, I can tell you the scale of a home like Longwood or Windsor almost never comes down to just ambition. It’s a combination of a few specific things:

• Cotton wealth — Before the Civil War, Natchez had more millionaires per capita than almost anywhere else in America, and homes were built to show it.
• Imported materials — French mirrors, Philadelphia gasoliers, and New York marble weren’t local. Every piece was shipped in by river and installed by hand.
• Named architects — Homes designed by Samuel Sloan or Levi Weeks, rather than local builders, cost more and were built to be landmarks from day one.
• Enslaved labor — The scale and speed of construction on nearly every home on this list relied on the forced labor of enslaved people, a history these sites now work to interpret honestly.
• Land and river access — A plantation economy meant land was cheap and plentiful, letting owners build wider, taller, and grander than city lots would ever allow.

Final Thoughts

What strikes me most about the Largest House in Mississippi isn’t the square footage—it’s the story behind it. The Largest House in Mississippi, Longwood, took years to plan but was abandoned mid-build, leaving every unfinished wall exactly where the Civil War stopped construction. Visiting the Largest House in Mississippi reveals history frozen in time, and that perspective shapes every project I write about. Whether covering the Largest House in Mississippi or a small home renovation, I always focus on the stories that make each property unforgettable.

If you want to see how good design and history show up in homes at every scale, take a look through our Home Decor section, there’s a lot to learn from how the grandest homes in the country were put together, no matter their size.