Lakewood is a historic antebellum mansion in Livingston,

Alabama Alabama ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Deep South, Deep Southern regions of the United States. It borders Tennessee to the north, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gu ...

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

. The two-and-a-half-story

Greek Revival Greek Revival architecture is a architectural style, style that began in the middle of the 18th century but which particularly flourished in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, predominantly in northern Europe, the United States, and Canada, ...

-style house was completed in 1840. The house was recorded by the

Historic American Buildings Survey The asterisk ( ), from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , , "little star", is a Typography, typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a star (heraldry), heraldic star. Computer scientists and Mathematici ...

in 1936. It was added to Alabama's Places in Peril in 2012, a listing that highlights significantly endangered properties in the state.

History

Lakewood was built for Joseph Lake, a native of

North Carolina North Carolina ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, South Carolina to the south, Georgia (U.S. stat ...

, by Hiram W. Bardwell, a master builder. Construction was completed in 1840. Located adjacent to the University of West Alabama, Julia Strudwick Tutwiler, a Lake relative, periodically resided in the house from 1881 to 1910 while she served as president of the university. It was then known as Livingston Normal College. The house was extensively photographed by Alex Bush for the Historic American Buildings Survey in November and December 1936. Lakewood has continued to be owned by descendants of the Lake family to the current day. The house and its surviving of grounds were listed on the Places in Peril in 2012 due to the immediate threat of its acquisition by developers.

Architecture

The house has a plan that is relatively rare in early Alabama architecture. The plan features a brick ground floor that is topped by one and a half stories of wood-frame construction. The ground floor originally contained domestic spaces, with the formal rooms on the principal floor and bedrooms on the upper floor. A central hallway is present on all levels. The facade is five bays wide, with central entrance doors on the ground and principal floors. The bays are divided by two-story Doric

pilaster In architecture, a pilaster is both a load-bearing section of thickened wall or column integrated into a wall, and a purely decorative element in classical architecture which gives the appearance of a supporting column and articulates an ext ...

s, with the middle third of the facade occupied by a two-tiered tetrastyle Doric portico. Two curved

wrought iron Wrought iron is an iron alloy with a very low carbon content (less than 0.05%) in contrast to that of cast iron (2.1% to 4.5%), or 0.25 for low carbon "mild" steel. Wrought iron is manufactured by heating and melting high carbon cast iron in an ...

staircases ascend from ground level to the front center of the upper portico, leading to the formal entrance.

References

{{Reflist Greek Revival houses in Alabama Houses in Sumter County, Alabama Houses completed in 1840