Qualla: Arlington Antebellum Home & Gardens

Arlington Antebellum Home & Gardens: Introduction

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Birmingham did not exist when Arlington was built. The grand eight-room Greek Revival mansion went up between 1845 and 1850 in Elyton, the second county seat of Jefferson County, under orders from William S. Mudd. He called it The Grove, for the old hardwood trees surrounding the house site. Enslaved laborers and craftsmen did the building. Mudd married Florence Earle in 1846 and needed a residence worthy of a man who would help establish the industrial city that eventually swallowed Elyton whole. Arlington is the last structure standing from that vanished town -- Birmingham's only antebellum mansion, a relic from before the city even had a name.

Arlington Antebellum Home & Gardens: Built on Someone Else's Labor

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The two-story frame house rose in the Greek Revival style that dominated the antebellum South -- columns, symmetry, classical proportions meant to signal permanence and authority. Despite being categorized in some records as a plantation home, Arlington was never a working planta...

Arlington Antebellum Home & Gardens: Soldiers at the Door

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In 1865, the Civil War arrived at Arlington's front steps. Union troops occupied the house during Wilson's Raid, the devastating cavalry campaign that swept through Alabama in the closing weeks of the conflict. Arlington became the staging point for one of the war's most symbolic...

Arlington Antebellum Home & Gardens: Motor Cars and Modern Plumbing

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

After the war, Arlington passed through a succession of owners before landing in the hands of Robert S. Munger in 1902. Over the next twenty years, Munger dragged the old house into the twentieth century: plumbing, electric lights, and a second structure moved across the street t...

Arlington Antebellum Home & Gardens: Saved by a City

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

By the mid-twentieth century, Arlington's future was uncertain. In 1953, a citizens' group and the City of Birmingham pooled resources to purchase the property, transforming it from a private residence into a public landmark. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places sin...