Ashe Cottage

Ashe Cottage
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage
Ashe Cottage, undergoing repainting in 2008
Location	307 North Commissioners Avenue Demopolis, Alabama
Coordinates	32°31′9.16″N 87°50′25.19″W / 32.5192111°N 87.8403306°WCoordinates: 32°31′9.16″N 87°50′25.19″W / 32.5192111°N 87.8403306°W
Area	1 acre (0.40 ha)
Built	1832;[1] 1858[2]
Architect	Dr. William Cincinnatus Ashe
Architectural style	Gothic Revival
NRHP Reference #	78000502[2]
Significant dates
Added to NRHP	19 October 1978[3]
Designated ARLH	August 22, 1975[1]

Ashe Cottage, also known as the Ely House, is a historic Carpenter Gothic house in Demopolis, Alabama. It was built in 1832^[1] 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.^[4] The house is one of only about twenty remaining residential examples of Gothic Revival architecture remaining in the state.^[5] 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.^[1][2]

The Ashe House is given as one of four examples of the paired-gable subtype of Gothic Revival houses in A Field Guide to American Houses (1984). It is noted as having "very delicate lace-like porches and vergeboard details." Paired gables appear in about five percent of Gothic Revival houses in America.^[6]

References

1. "The Alabama Register of Landmarks & Heritage" (PDF). preserveala.org. Alabama Historical Commission. April 1, 2013. Archived from the original on April 28, 2013. Retrieved April 28, 2013.
2. National Park Service (2010-07-09). "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service.
3. "Alabama: Marengo County". "Nationalhistoricalregister.com". Retrieved 2007-01-23.
4. Smith, Winston (2003). The People's City: The Glory and the Grief of an Alabama Town, 1850–1874. Demopolis, Alabama: Marengo County Historical Society. p. 73.
5. Gamble, Robert (1990). Historic architecture in Alabama: a guide to styles and types, 1810–1930. Tuscaloosa, Alabama: The University of Alabama Press. pp. 89–90. ISBN 0-8173-1134-3.
6. Virginia and Lee McAlester, A Field Guide to American Homes, 1984, Alfred A. Knopf's Borzoi Books, New York. pages 197, 204.