(This week, AL.com is touring various lake homes - and, in this case, a river house - from across the state to get you in the spirit for Memorial Day weekend.)
Just behind a white picket fence, deep in the heart of sleepy Magnolia Springs, lies a much-loved family compound that sprawls beside the meandering Magnolia River.
The Houser estate was acquired in 1987 and, throughout the 1990s, was restored and expanded, and listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Sitting on about two acres of lushly landscaped property, the original, circa-1900 home, once known as the Governor's Club, has been completely restored. In addition, several other outbuildings, include a river house, a two-story building with two separate apartments, a pool house and a boat house, recently were listed for sale with Bob Allsman of RE/MAX By the Bay in Fairhope for $4.79 million.
When Frank Brunell, a wealthy Chicago businessman, originally purchased the land alongside the river more than a hundred years ago, he built the home, along with some other cottages, a water tower and a working farm. According to the application for the National Register, the home has historical significance because it's a rare example of an early 20th Century resort hotel - a place where Northerners could escape the harsh winters.
Standing in the home's kitchen, which retains all of the charm of the era in which it was built, but with all the amenities a modern chef would want, Allsman flips through two albums filled with black-and-white images of the home taken nearly a century ago. The photos show horses grazing, along with groves of satsuma trees and scattered cottages. One photo is captioned "Fishing party on a Governor's Club yacht," with men in three-piece wool suits dressed to the nines for a fishing excursion.
Today, fishing is a much more casual affair. But the Governor's Club is as elegant as ever, filled with tasteful period antiques and painstakingly restored by Mobile-based architect and interior designer H. Don Bowden of Bowden Architecture.
The house, which Bowden describes as "almost a Carpenter Queen Anne," has a deep porch that wraps around three sides. Above the front and back entrances are skylights that are original to the house.
"We modernized it and made it more livable," he said.
The house is designed with "a very traditional Southern layout," Bowden said. "It's kind of a glorified dogtrot." The central part of the home has double doors at the front and back, which could be opened to catch the breeze from the river. The original floor plan, he said, had four rooms on each side of the central, public space.
Now it has a large dining room and a study with custom-built bookshelves, as well as a small office, on one side, and a master suite with a walk-in closet and full bath on the other. A kitchen wing has been added, with stairs leading to a second bedroom with a sitting area and a bathroom.
The windows extend from the floor to the 12-foot ceilings in the dining room, study and master bedroom. The dining room, with a beautiful inlaid wood floor, is large enough to hold a dining table with 14 chairs. A double-sided fireplace opens into both the dining room and the study.
There's another double-sided fireplace in the master bedroom, where the paneled walls and ceiling are painted a soothing shade of celadon that's repeated in many of the other rooms on the property.
In addition to the main house, Bowden converted two small cottages into a stunning, two-story structure known as "The Magnolia House," with screened porches along both floors overlooking the river. The first-level apartment has three bedrooms and two baths, and the upstairs apartment has two bedrooms and two baths.
The main house set the tone for the decorating style in the comfortable yet stylish apartments that have reclaimed pine floors, glass-front cabinets and charming cottage accents such as horizontal beaded board in the downstairs kitchen, cozy built-in reading nooks in the bedrooms and a stained-glass window in a bathroom.
Likewise, the 1950s ranch-style house closest to the river has been renovated so that it has the same cottage feel. A screened porch runs the length of the three-bedroom, two-bath home, overlooking the water. A sign over the door reads "Life is Better on the River."
The family's collection of paintings and pottery by local artists is displayed throughout all of the structures on the property.
"Everything is done so tastefully," said Allsman. "It's a pleasure to present."
Brick pathways lead beneath old oak trees from one building to the next. Fist-sized gardenias are blooming right now. Bowden noted that Paul Fontenot of GDSI Landscaping helped to create "outdoor rooms" - for instance, the pool area is blocked from the river by a "wall" of bushes. A brick courtyard area is centered around a fountain at one end of the main house's front porch. And, of course, porches abound.
Even the pool house has a porch that overlooks the heated pool and spa. Inside is a living room with a fireplace flanked by leaded-glass windows; an open kitchen featuring a long island with several barstools; a dining area; and a full bath.
On the water, the boat house has three covered boat slips and a fishing dock. Upstairs is a surprise: a media room with several alcoves, all lined in poplar wood. Whether watching movies on the projection screen or just playing board games on the coffee table, any child would consider the 1,430-square-foot media room a dream come true.
Bowden's role as architect and interior designer was to tie all of the structures together, by repeating certain architectural elements such and making all the spaces family-friendly and livable yet elegant inside and out.
"I tried to keep everything in character so you wouldn't think of it as a restoration or addition," he said. He wanted it "to feel like a home, but to honor the character and spirit of the original building."