| Bride's Hill | |
| Coordinates: | 34.6703°N -87.2444°W |
| Built: | 1830 |
| Added: | July 9, 1986 |
| Mpsub: | Tidewater Cottages in the Tennessee Valley TR |
| Refnum: | 86001544 |
| Designated Other1 Name: | Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage |
| Designated Other1 Abbr: | ARLH |
| Designated Other1 Color: |
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| Designated Other1 Link: | Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage |
| Designated Other1 Date: | April 16, 1985[1] |
Bride's Hill, known also as Sunnybrook, is a historic plantation house near Wheeler, Alabama. It is significant as an example of a Tidewater-type cottage. It was added to the Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage on April 16, 1985, and to the National Register of Historic Places on July 9, 1986.[1]
A member of the Dandridge family, cousins of America's first First Lady (Martha Washington), is believed to have built Bride's Hill. Its deep cellar, lighted by oblong ground-level windows, houses a basement kitchen-dining room. On the main floor a broad central hall, with a graceful reverse-flight stairway rising to the low half-story above, separates two large rooms. Allegedly a separate brick kitchen structure once stood to the rear. When absorbed into the vast Joseph Wheeler estate in 1907, the house and surrounding farm became known as Sunnybrook. Located in rural Lawrence County, the house has been unoccupied since the 1980s and is in a state of disrepair.[2]
Brought to the early Alabama plantation frontier by settlers from the Tidewater and Piedmont regions of Virginia, this vernacular house-type is usually a story-and-a-half in height, and characterized by prominent end chimneys flanking a steeply pitched roof often pierced by dormer windows.[2]