Sycamore Hall

Sycamore Hall – That Epitome of Southern Style, Place, and Space*The house is situated on 4 stately acres in the community of Beatrice. Additional land can be purchased in the nearby community of Buena Vista located approximatley 10 miles away. Offered Divided: The House or the house and 452 acres, 250 acres, or 100 acresSet serenely within a lushly landscaped block in quaint Beatrice, Alabama, Sycamore Hall is a physical manifestation of a uniquely Southern ideal, and in ways both seen and unseen. Architectural style, natural setting, and ancestral feel work in concert to make this gracious small-town seat singularly fantastic. A testament to a community’s historic origins and its continuing appeal, Sycamore Hall is the type of property that rarely appears on the market. The associational, architectural, and situational realities of the house and grounds afford more than a delightful look back in time. They are means whereby you might reconnect the grounding and gracious benefits of traditional living.Sycamore Hall was built in 1905. The property’s history is part and parcel of Beatrice itself. Founded in 1900 and incorporated a year later, Beatrice is a handsome and well-planned community located in northeast Monroe County. The area benefitted from further development in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by way of the railroads. The Monroe Journal of 5 April 1905 described the new town as “surrounded by beautiful and rich farming country, well timbered lands, pine, oak, popular, ash, hickory and sweet gum, the purest and best water and one of the healthiest communities in the South.”Beatrice’s residential properties have always been one of its greatest draws. On a promissory above the bustling downtown were constructed the town’s finest houses. Sycamore Hall is the grandest built and to survive. Built for Mrs. Nicholas Walter Stallworth, a widow with considerable acreage, the house occupies almost an entire city block. Over four acres of grounds surround the house. Original and later plantings, some many decades old, divide the property into a succession of landscaped rooms. The house is the focal point of the property, not to mention the quarter of the city in which it stands.Stylistically, Sycamore Hill represents a subtle and successful blending of the best attributes of Queen Anne and Colonial Revival styles in both its architectural elements and interior floor plan. Bay windows, varying roof forms, and multiple galleries, all positive attributes of the Late Victorian era Queen Anne, mingle with classical proportions and elements, including Tuscan columns, of the Colonial Revival. The house has the best of two architectural worlds!The original cast iron fence extends length of the manicured front lawn. Interestingly, the house opposite, a charming one-story cottage, was where Mrs. Stallworth and her family lived while Sycamore Hill was being constructed. That is one way of assuring expert construction and craftsmanship! The finest of old growth heart pine and white oak employed in the sills, floor boards, window sashes, and siding is another means to the aforementioned end.Sycamore Hill is more than a stimulating amalgam of fine craftsmanship, grand spaces, and nice features set within a landscaped setting. There is an intangible aspect to the house that is only found with a property that has long been associated with a family. Five generations of the same family have resided at Sycamore Hill. Continuity of ownership has assured conscious stewardship, and with both flair and substance.Offered with 452 acres of recreational timberland, Sycamore Hill is a place that you can generally experience by driving by with a lingering glance in the rear-view mirror. House and property make for a fine pairing.  There is a reason why situations of this type rarely appear on the market and do not remain there long. A short drive from Monroeville, Camden, and Greenville, further ambience and additional conveniences are in easy reach. Sycamore Hill is connected in more than senses than location. A livable past in the present, this wonderful property has all the attributes that make the South so special.