Burritt on the Mountain, Open-air museum in Huntsville, Alabama.
Burritt on the Mountain is an open-air museum on a hilltop in Huntsville featuring a large 1930s mansion, farm buildings, and walking trails. The elevated location offers views across the Tennessee Valley and the surrounding landscape.
William Henry Burritt, a Huntsville physician, designed an X-shaped mansion on his 167-acre estate after returning from St. Louis in 1934. The house featured straw insulation inspired by a Missouri farm visit. On June 6, 1936, the day he moved in, an electrical fire spread through the straw and metal panels and destroyed it. Burritt rebuilt the house and lived there until his death in 1955, when he left the property to the city for a museum.
The park is split into an 1850 area and a 1900 area, each furnished with tools and household objects of its period. The Joel Eddins House, a hall-and-parlor log home built in 1810 near Ardmore, was moved here in 2007. A replica of a four-room Rosenwald school stands among the non-historic buildings.
The grounds sit on Round Top Mountain, a plateau connected to Monte Sano Mountain, so expect a climb from the entrance to the mansion and the 1850 and 1900 building areas. The park is divided into these two sections, with the historic structures spread between them. Allow time to walk from the welcome center to the far buildings.
The 1810 Joel Eddins House, a 1+1⁄2-story hall-and-parlor log home, was moved to the grounds from near Ardmore in Limestone County in 2007; it joined the National Register in 1996. The museum also holds a replica of a four-room Rosenwald school.
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