The Villas at Carter Plantation are a modern luxury hotel with all of the amenities and service that one would expect of a world class vacation resort. The villas and the Carter Plantation Golf Resort are built on an historic plantation property that dates to the original Spanish Land Grant deeded to James Rheims in 1804.

Thomas Freeman, the first African American to own land in Livingston Parish, acquired the property from Mr. Rheims in 1817. Mr. Freeman built the plantation house, which he named Sycamore, between 1817 and 1820. The house is on the National Register of Historic Places. Built in the dog trot style, the house is representative of a middle class plantation home common in Louisiana. The “dog trot” style was a way to deal with hot, humid summers of the deep South. The design was such that it accelerated air flowing through a passage, which served as an early form of air conditioning. The materials for the home came from the property. The foundation and fireplace were built from bricks made on the plantation. The hand hewn pine and cypress boards were from two of the three primary crops of the plantation (the third being citrus). Mortar was made from native clay, shell, lime and sand.