Click image to enlarge. A key architectural landmark of the Courtland National Register Historic District, the Bankhead-Shackelford House was perhaps the most significant residence built in this planter community during the post-Reconstruction era. This house dates between the prosperous antebellum years and the renewal of cotton prosperity that occurred between 1900 and the beginning of the First World War. Accordingly, the house attests to a tendency for older forms and layouts to linger underneath decorative detail that changed with the tide of fashion. Today the house speaks to the architectural conservatism of Alabama’s nineteenth-century agrarian gentry. Unoccupied for many years, the house has been minimally maintained. For this warm and enticingly livable place, a thoughtful restoration would not only preserve this important piece of Alabama’s architecture, but serve as a catalyst for neighborhood revitalization.
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