Flames ripped through the Nottoway Plantation House Thursday evening, destroying the largest standing antebellum mansion in the United States. The 160-year-old structure in Iberville Parish is now a charred shell of what once stood as both a major tourist destination and a complicated symbol of the South’s past.

Little remains of the historic Nottoway plantation home in Iberville Parish after a fire reduced the 160-year-old mansion to rubble on Thursday. Charred pieces framework had fallen to the slab, with soot surrounding the once grandiose property. The prominent white columns that supported the roof were mostly gone.