Fletcher-Lowe House

The story

Behind the sketch.

A. S. Fletcher and his wife, Mattie Lowe Fletcher, replaced an early Federal house on this property with something considerably more theatrical. Designed by Herbert Cowell, the same architect responsible for the nearby Van Valkenburgh-Johnston House, the new mansion combined Châteauesque towers and stonework with Queen Anne and Colonial Revival details. The Fletchers demolished most of the earlier house, built for attorney Henry Minor, between 1817 and 1820, but they did not entirely erase it. Its two-story rear service wing survives behind the mansion. The building originally contained domestic workspaces, a smokehouse, and quarters for enslaved people. Fletcher was an attorney, banker, state legislator, and delegate to Alabama's 1901 constitutional convention. After his death in 1908, the house passed to his nephew, Robert Joseph Lowe, who later served in both the Alabama House and Senate. Lowe's widow, Jane Knight Lowe, eventually left the property to the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and it became the university president's residence.

Neighborhood

Twickenham

Book location

Page 32