Griffith, Robert G., Sr., House

The Major Robert G. Griffith house is significant under Criterion C for architecture. The only surviving early T house in Blount County, the dwelling exemplifies the domestic architectural setting of a moderately wealthy upland agricultural family in Appalachian Alabama. The construction materials, frame with cladding, were exceptional in an area where log domestic architecture predominated well into the 20th century. Moreover, the faux decorative treatment of the interior represents one of the few survivals of such work, especially in a vemacularized variation, so far discovered anywhere in the state. Finally,the Griffith house is one of the few mid-19th century dwellings of its type with which the name of a particular house wright or“mechanic" can be associated: that of Joseph Britton (sometimes spelled Brittain). Modifications have not obscured the essential character of the house, and are, themselves, indicative of how a highly representational upland house type has been modified and adapted through several generations.

The Griffith house is significant under Criterion A for settlement. Both the migration pattern represented by its original owner, the first Robert Griffin Griffith - from Pennsylvania down the great Appalachian valley into northeastern Alabama -as well as the inherent physical character of the house and its natural setting, exemplify important aspects of upland Anglo-American culture as it existed and eventually spread from the Mid-Atlantic region to the edge of the Deep South: a culture altered and acclimatized in numerous ways but fundamentally coherent. The Griffith Homestead is apparently unique in Blount County as an intact upper-echelon house/farm surviving from the earliest period of settlement to the present.