Aduston Hall | |
Location | Gainesville, Alabama, United States |
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Coordinates | 32°48′47″N88°9′36″W / 32.81306°N 88.16000°W |
Built | 1844–46 |
Architectural style | Greek Revival |
Part of | Gainesville Historic District (ID85002925) |
Aduston Hall is a historic antebellum plantation house in the riverside town of Gainesville, Alabama. [1] Although the raised cottage displays the strict symmetry and precise detailing of the Greek Revival style, it is very unusual in its massing. The house is low and spread out over one-story with a fluid floor-plan more reminiscent of a 20th-century California ranch house than the typically boxy neoclassical houses of its own era. [1] [2] [3]
It is a contributing property to the Gainesville Historic District. The district was listed on the Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage on March 25, 1976, and the National Register of Historic Places on October 3, 1985. [4] [5] Now owned by the Sumter County Historical Society, the house is operated as a visitor welcome center for the historic district. [4] [3] The Society also uses the house and grounds as the centerpiece of its Sumter Heritage Days, held each spring. In 1994, the Historical Society received $130,000 in local, state, and federal funds to stabilize and restore the house. [6] [7]
Aduston Hall was built as a summer home for Amos Travis from 1844 to 1846. Travis, a resident of Mobile, used the house as a refuge from the heat, humidity, and disease that plagued Mobile during the summer months. The property was a largely self-sufficient plantation complex. Five 19th-century outbuildings remain at the site. [8]
The one-story wood-frame house is composed of a rectangular central main block and H-shaped side wings. The roof of the central portion runs parallel to the front of the house. The center of this block is fronted by a temple-like pedimented Doric portico projecting several feet out from the main Doric porch under the main roof. The central front entrance door is derived from designs published by Asher Benjamin. The main block is abutted on both sides by front gabled side wings projecting past the central portion to the front and rear of the house. These are ornamented with Doric pilasters. [1] With its H-shaped plan, the house provided excellent cross ventilation for all of the major rooms. [2]
Historically, there were three other very similar houses known in the vicinity of Aduston Hall. The Travis-Derryberry-Harwood House (also built by the Travis family as a summerhouse), which also survives in Gainesville, the Norwood Plantation in Faunsdale, Alabama, destroyed in the 1930s, and the Van de Graaff home which was located in the Virginia Hill area of Gainesville . [1]
Livingston is a city in and the county seat of Sumter County, Alabama, United States and the home of the University of West Alabama. By an act of the state legislature, it was incorporated on January 10, 1835. At the 2010 census the population was 3,485, up from 3,297 in 2000. It was named in honor of Edward Livingston, of the Livingston family of New York.
Bride's Hill, known also as Sunnybrook, is a historic plantation house near Wheeler, Alabama. It is significant as an example of a Tidewater-type cottage. It was added to the Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage on April 16, 1985, and to the National Register of Historic Places on July 9, 1986.
Barton Hall, also known as the Cunningham Plantation, is an antebellum plantation house near present-day Cherokee, Alabama. Built in 1840, it is a stylistically rare example of Greek Revival architecture in Alabama, with elements from the late Federal period. The house was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1973 for its architecture.
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Ashe Cottage, also known as the Ely House, is a historic Carpenter Gothic house in Demopolis, Alabama. It was built in 1832 and expanded and remodeled in the Gothic Revival style in 1858 by William Cincinnatus Ashe, a physician from North Carolina. The cottage is a 1+1⁄2-story wood-frame building, the front elevation features two semi-octagonal gabled front bays with a one-story porch inset between them. The gables and porch are trimmed with bargeboards in a design taken from Samuel Sloan's plan for "An Old English Cottage" in his 1852 publication, The Model Architect. The house is one of only about twenty remaining residential examples of Gothic Revival architecture remaining in the state. Other historic Gothic Revival residences in the area include Waldwic in Gallion and Fairhope Plantation in Uniontown. Ashe Cottage was added to the Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage on August 22, 1975, and to the National Register of Historic Places on 19 October 1978.
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The Stone Plantation, also known as the Young Plantation and the Barton Warren Stone House, is a historic Greek Revival-style plantation house and one surviving outbuilding along the Old Selma Road on the outskirts of Montgomery, Alabama. It had been the site of a plantation complex, and prior to the American Civil War it was known for cotton production worked by enslaved people.
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Dicksonia, also known as the Turner-Dickson House, was a historic plantation house just south of Lowndesboro, Alabama, United States. Dating back to 1830, it was destroyed by fire twice. The house was recorded by the Historic American Buildings Survey in 1934 and the ruins were later featured in the 1993 book Silent in the Land. For the May 1999 issue of Vanity Fair magazine, Annie Leibovitz did a photo shoot of Natalie Portman at the ruins on February 7, 1999.
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The Gainesville Historic District is a historic district that encompasses a historic section of Gainesville, Alabama, United States. The district was listed on the Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage on March 25, 1976 and the National Register of Historic Places on October 3, 1985. The district covered 76 acres (31 ha) and contained 24 historically significant contributing properties when first listed.
Alpine is a historic plantation house in Alpine, Talladega County, Alabama, United States. Completed in 1858, the two-story Greek Revival-style house was built for Nathaniel Welch by a master builder, Almarion Devalco Bell. The wood-frame house has several unusual features that make it one of the more architecturally interesting antebellum houses in the state. These features include the foundation materials, interior floor-plan, and the window fenestration.
The Gibbs House is a historic house in Gainesville, Sumter County, Alabama. The one-story wood-frame structure was built for Hawkins Gibbs from 1860 to 1861. The vernacular Greek Revival style house features a main central block with a side-gable roof, flanked by front-gabled wings to either side. The front facade of the main block features a full-width porch, set under the main roof. A similar version of this arrangement, largely unique to the Gainesville area in Alabama, is seen at Aduston Hall and a number of other nearby houses. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on October 3, 1985.
The Phelps–Jones House is a historic residence in Huntsville, Alabama. One of the oldest buildings in Alabama, it was built in 1818, shortly after the initial federal land sale in Madison County in 1809. Despite having many owners, the original character of the house has remained. The two-story house is built of brick laid in Flemish bond, and has Federal and Georgian details. The original block has a bedroom and parlor separated by a central hall, with a dining room in an ell to the northeast. Staircases in the hall and dining room led to three bedrooms on the second floor. In 1956, a porch in the crook of the ell was enclosed, adding a bathroom and small bedroom. Another porch off the rear of the dining room was enclosed and converted into a kitchen. Interior woodwork, including six mantels, is in provincial Federal style. The façade is five bays wide, with twelve-over-twelve sash windows on the ground floor and twelve-over-eight on the second. A narrow hipped roof porch covers the double front door; originally a wider porch covered a single door flanked by narrow sidelights and topped with a transom. The house was listed on the Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage in 1979 and the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.
Greenlawn is a historic residence between Meridianville and Huntsville, Alabama. The house was built in 1849–50 by William Otey, replacing a log house built by his father in the early 1810s. Following William and his wife's deaths, the house was taken over by one of their granddaughters in 1907. Around 1925, the original Italianate portico was replaced with the current Greek Revival entrance, and a northern wing was added. The house fell vacant in 1963 and was later restored, now sitting at the entrance to a subdivision of the same name.
The James Martin House is a historic residence in Florence, Alabama. Martin was a leading Florence industrialist of the Antebellum era, who owned a cotton spinning mill along Cypress Creek. He had come to Florence from Jefferson County, Kentucky, and established his mill in 1839. A fire destroyed the complex in 1844, but was rebuilt and reopened in 1850. The mill was destroyed during the Civil War, but not rebuilt before Martin's death in 1869. Martin's sons operated the mill until 1873, and owned the house until 1879. It was purchased in 1886 by John Bounds, and remained in his family until 1974.