Richards DAR House, Italianate house museum in Mobile, Alabama, United States

Richards DAR House is a two-story brick Italianate house completed in 1860 in Mobile, Alabama. Its rectangular main block has semi-octagonal bays at the rear, and a cast iron veranda with allegorical figures of the four seasons spans the three bays of the front. The veranda deck is marble and granite, and bracketed cornices and paneled soffits sit below a shallow hipped roof.

The Italianate house was completed in 1860 for Charles G. Richards, a steamboat captain, and his wife Caroline Elizabeth Steele. It stayed in the family until 1946, when the Ideal Cement Company bought it and renovated it for offices in 1947. In 1973 it passed to the city of Mobile, which leased it to the Daughters of the American Revolution to run as a museum.

The house was built in 1860 for steamboat captain Charles G. Richards and his wife Caroline Elizabeth Steele, and stayed in their family until 1946. Four Mobile chapters of the Daughters of the American Revolution now run it as a museum, and the veranda's cast iron figures of the four seasons are a detail to look for.

The house is operated as a museum by Mobile's four DAR chapters, which maintain it and lead visitors through the side-hall plan, curved staircase and veranda. It stands within the De Tonti Square Historic District, listed in 1972, so the surrounding streets of 19th-century Mobile can be walked before or after the interior visit.

The cast iron veranda carries allegorical figures of the four seasons, not musicians. The deck beneath them is marble and granite, and the two-storey brick main block ends in semi-octagonal bays at the rear.