The current owners are interior designer Hal Williamson and Dale Le Blanc, who purchased the 9,800-square-foot home for just $100,000 in 1994. The couple completed an extensive decade-long restoration, which included two years updating the fence alone, Nola.com reports. The mansion has six bedrooms, three full baths, and two powder rooms. It was originally listed last March for $6.5 million, but it has since been reduced to $5 million. But enough about now, let’s talk about a previous occupant . . .

Built in 1859 for Colonel Robert Short of Kentucky and designed by Henry Howard, the Italian-Renaissance villa at 1448 Fourth Street is best known for its ironwork fence, incorporating a morning glory and cornstalk motifs. The story goes that Short's wife complained of missing the cornfields in her native Iowa, so he bought her the cornstalk fence. A revisionist explanation supplied by a recent owner is that the wife saw that it was the most expensive fence in the building catalog and requested it. Unlike a similar cornstalk fence on Royal Street, this one has not been painted and shows its original colors.

But that’s still not the guy pictured above. That would be Major General Benjamin Franklin Butler, the Union military governor of New Orleans, who was probably the most reviled man in the South. He quickly became known as “Beast” and “Spoons” because he was accused of stealing silverware from the homes he occupied during the Civil War.

The house was confiscated by federal forces in 1863, and briefly became the executive mansion of the federal governor of Louisiana before being returned to Short, who lived there for the rest of his life.

Click the Beast’s picture below to see a video.