The Samuel Lawson Dowling House is a historic residence in

Ozark, Alabama Ozark is a city in and the county seat of Dale County, Alabama. As of the 2010 census, the population of the city was 14,907. Ozark is the principal city of the Ozark Micropolitan Statistical Area, as well as a part of the Dothan-Ozark Combi ...

. The house was built in 1870 by Samuel Lawson Dowling, whose family was one of the first groups to settle in

Dale County, Alabama Dale County is a county located in the southeastern part of the U.S. state of Alabama. As of the 2020 census the population was 49,326. Its county seat and largest city is Ozark. Its name is in honor of General Samuel Dale. Dale County compris ...

. Lawson's grandfather, Dempsey, was a

Methodist Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a group of historically related denominations of Protestant Christianity whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's b ...

minister who came to the

Wiregrass Region The Wiregrass region or Wiregrass country is an area of the Southern United States encompassing parts of southern Georgia, southeastern Alabama, and the Florida Panhandle. The region is named for the native ''Aristida stricta'', commonly known ...

from

Darlington County, South Carolina Darlington County is a county in the U.S. state of South Carolina. As of the 2020 census, its population was 62,905. Its county seat is Darlington. Hartsville is the largest city in the county. Darlington County is home to the Darlington Rac ...

, and helped found Claybank Church near Ozark. Samuel was a farmer, county treasurer, and construction contractor who built the first Methodist church in town. The house is similar in style to a

Tidewater-type cottage The central-passage house, also known variously as central hall plan house, center-hall house, hall-passage-parlor house, Williamsburg cottage, and Tidewater-type cottage, was a vernacular, or folk form, house type from the colonial period onward ...

, which was popular on the Atlantic coastal plain where many of Dale County's early settlers came from. Being built just before the railroad came to Ozark, it was one of the first architecturally styled homes in the area; most previous houses were log structures that emphasized function over form. The single-story house is five bays wide, with a steeply pitched

gable roof A gable roof is a roof consisting of two sections whose upper horizontal edges meet to form its ridge. The most common roof shape in cold or temperate climates, it is constructed of rafters, roof trusses or purlins. The pitch of a gable roof ca ...

and exterior chimneys in the gable ends. A shallow porch covers the front door, which features a

transom Transom may refer to: * Transom (architecture), a bar of wood or stone across the top of a door or window, or the window above such a bar * Transom (nautical), that part of the stern of a vessel where the two sides of its hull meet * Operation Tran ...

and

sidelight A sidelight or sidelite in a building is a window, usually with a vertical emphasis, that flanks a door or a larger window. Sidelights are narrow, usually stationary and found immediately adjacent doorways.Barr, Peter.Illustrated Glossary, 19th ...

s, and a pair of six-over-one

sash window A sash window or hung sash window is made of one or more movable panels, or "sashes". The individual sashes are traditionally paned window (architecture), paned windows, but can now contain an individual sheet (or sheets, in the case of double gla ...

s on either side of the door. The windows were originally six-over-six sashes, but were replaced around 1920. The interior is laid out in a center-hall plan, with two large rooms at the front of the house on either side of a hallway, and two smaller rooms behind. A two-room ell was added to the rear of the home around 1900. ''See also:'' The house was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

in 1996.

References

Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Alabama Houses completed in 1870 Houses in Dale County, Alabama National Register of Historic Places in Dale County, Alabama {{Alabama-NRHP-stub