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Description
Built in 1844 for John Glascock from Virginia, the home is of French Gothic design with distinctive Gothic windows. Glascock was a leading merchant and citizen of Tuscaloosa prior to the Civil War. Six bracketed posts of wood support the roof of the porch. The edge of the roof has three French Gothic gables - one at the entrance and one for each wing. The home is trimmed with "tear drop" mill work across the entire front. There are four two-sashed, nine-paned windows across the front of the house with a door leading from each wing onto the front porch. On the front of these wings are two double windows, twelve panes each, under Gothic points. Higher in the gable over these windows is a painted, louvered Gothic window. The front door, which has a square transom with eight panes, opens into a hall which separates two rooms on each side and opens into a large room at the back.
(Description from "Past Horizons," Tuscaloosa County Preservation Society, 1978)
According to a 2001 Tuscaloosa News article, Kentucky Senator Henry Clay is believed to have stayed in the home several times, and most of the home's features, from the wood floors to the mantels, have been unchanged since their construction in the early 19th century. Years of neglect had taken their toll on the 2,500-square-foot home and it was placed on the Alabama Historical Commission's "Places in Peril" list.
Louise Lawrence Foster, who inherited the house from her mother, Ruth Kirkpatrick, in 1988, said Glascock began the house in 1825 by constructing a two-room cottage on the property. As his dry-goods store became more successful, Glascock added to the house, its newest section was added in the 1840s. The house was used for Foster's Bookshop during the 1930s and 1940s, it was rented to Frank Boykin in 1956, who used it to house his antiques business. The Boykin family ceased renting the house in 1999, and the empty house became a target for vandals. Foster was looking to sell the house in 2001.
The house has since been removed from the endangered list and, in 2013, is home to businesses.
The house is on the National Register of Historic Places.