Shorter Mansion

The house was built for Eli Sims Shorter II and his wife, Wileyna, members of a prominent Eufaula family, around the turn of the twentieth century. It began as a more modest residence and was later remodeled and expanded into the grand Neoclassical Revival mansion visitors see today, gaining its sweeping colonnade of fluted Corinthian columns and a wide entablature that runs around the roofline.

In the twentieth century the house passed out of the family's hands and was eventually saved and restored by local preservationists, who opened it as a museum. Today it interprets the life of a well-off Eufaula family of the era and displays furnishings, portraits, and memorabilia tied to the town's history. It also serves as a community landmark, hosting events and welcoming visitors who come to admire the architecture.

Eufaula grew up on the bluffs above the Chattahoochee River, which forms the Alabama and Georgia line here. In the nineteenth century it was a busy river port and cotton-trading town, and the wealth of that era built the streets of substantial homes that survive today. When the boom faded, the town was spared the wave of demolition that reshaped many places, and its old houses endured.

The result is the Seth Lore and Irwinton Historic District, among the largest in the state, filled with Italianate, Victorian, and Neoclassical homes shaded by old oaks. The region long belonged to the Muscogee, or Creek, people, and the name Eufaula itself comes from a Creek town. Walking the district today is like moving through a catalog of American domestic architecture, and Shorter Mansion is its grandest single page.

Shorter Mansion is a textbook example of Neoclassical Revival, the columned, temple-front style that swept the country after the great expositions around 1900. Its most striking feature is the colonnade of tall Corinthian columns wrapping the front and sides, topped by an ornate frieze of scrolls and garlands that catches the light. Inside, the plan opens into gracious rooms with high ceilings and fine millwork.

The pleasure of a visit is partly the house itself and partly the way it sets the tone for the surrounding streets. Once you have seen the mansion, the smaller homes nearby come into focus, and you begin to notice the columns, brackets, and porches that repeat across the district in every scale. It rewards a slow walk with your eyes up.

Each spring Eufaula holds a pilgrimage of homes, when Shorter Mansion and a number of private historic houses open to visitors, and the town fills with people admiring azaleas and architecture together. It is the most festive time to visit, though the mansion welcomes travelers throughout the year, and the quieter seasons offer the district to yourself.

Just beyond the historic streets lies Lake Eufaula, a vast reservoir on the Chattahoochee long known as a bass-fishing destination and a haven for wintering birds. Spring and fall are gentle and green, summer is warm and humid in classic Deep South fashion, and even winter is mild, when the bare trees open up views across the water. A day here easily mixes grand houses with the outdoors.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.