Longue Vue House & Gardens recently marked a meaningful step forward with a groundbreaking ceremony for the soon to be built Discovery House: a new outdoor education and community space at Longue Vue. Shaped by the legacy of the Rosenwald Schools, which were a collection of early 20th century schools built across the rural South to provide education for Black children, and Ellen Biddle Shipman’s iconic Country Place Era garden design, the Discovery House celebrates an intersection of national, regional, and site-specific history.
Set within the Discovery Garden, the new pavilion will match the volume and footprint of the two-classroom Rosenwald School’s “industrial room”, featuring a gabled roof and tall windows to echo the school’s iconic profile. This room, known also as the “community room” or “lab space”, was a space for students and adults to learn hands-on skills for use outside of the classroom. In addition to the historical significance of its design, the Discovery House will use wood salvaged from the Liberty Hill Teacher’s Home, an abandoned Rosenwald teacher’s residence in Homer, Louisiana. After the materials from the teacher’s home were offered to Longue Vue through the Louisiana Trust for Historical Preservation, the project was reimagined to incorporate the salvaged wood as slatted cladding for the Discovery House, honoring the craftsmanship and legacy of the Rosenwald-era buildings while giving new life to materials that once supported education and community in rural Louisiana.
Inspired by the legacy of the Rosenwald Schools, the Discovery House aims to bring a similar spirit of access and equity into the present. The connection comes full circle at Longue Vue, as Julius Rosenwald, who co-founded the school initiative with Booker T. Washington, was the father of Edith Stern. Edith and her husband, Edgar Stern, would go on to build a home at Longue Vue, which has now stood for over 100 years as a place of education, civil engagement, and cultural enrichment.
“We wanted the Discovery House to feel both familiar and meaningful — to embody the spirit of the Rosenwald Schools while grounding it in the landscape traditions of Longue Vue,” said Trae Horn, Project Designer. “By echoing the historic footprint of the industrial room and integrating salvaged materials from the Liberty Hill Teacher’s Home, we’re not only preserving a physical legacy, but also creating a space where new stories can grow.”
Designed to connect indoor and garden spaces, the Discovery House will serve as a center to celebrate ancestral growing and gardening practices across African, Indigenous, European, and Asian traditions. Its garden-integrated design extends the vision of Ellen Biddle Shipman, the pioneering landscape architect who designed Longue Vue’s gardens from 1935 to 1950 during the twilight of the Country Place Era. The axial views created by Shipman pull visitors through the gardens from moment to moment, providing glances to the next outdoor space or structure. Her design of the landscape at Longue Vue has been integral to the design of the Discovery House, which provides axial views to the house and to other moments in the Discovery Garden. Blurring the lines between house and garden, interior and exterior, the Discovery House is built to honor Shipman’s vision and embody her ideal of garden-centered living. The project continues a decades-long relationship between Longue Vue and Waggonner & Ball, reflecting the value of long-term partnership in sustaining a site’s legacy while adapting to new needs and opportunities.
At the groundbreaking ceremony, there was a clear message conveyed. The Discovery House is more than a structure, it’s a living continuation of the values Longue Vue was founded on: preservation, education, equity, and the relationship between people and land.
