Question of the Week: What’s your favorite Civil War battlefield building?
What is your favorite Civil War battlefield building? The Carter House? Shiloh Church? Somewhere else?
What is your favorite Civil War battlefield building? The Carter House? Shiloh Church? Somewhere else?
For poignant reasons, the McLean House. Start and finish of the war in the Northern Virginia theater…
The Dobbin House, Gettysburg. Built in 1776 by the Rev. Alexander Dobbin, this stone structure is Gettysburg’s oldest surviving building. During the battle it was behind the Confederate lines, but close to Cemetery Hill.
A small attic display commemorates its reported use as a station on the Underground Railroad. It has a wonderful downstairs colonial style tavern.
Also, part of a separate building now used as a bed & breakfast previously was owned by the Widow Leister (Meade used her small home on the battlefield as his HQ) and I think was originally attached (post battle) to her battlefield house but moved into town.
I do think that the Carter House and outbuildings at Franklin, Tennessee is the most iconic with the myriads of bullets holes speckling each building. It is most impressive when viewed from the inside with the sunlight streaming through the holes, a visual reminder of the amount of lead that was flying that day.
Squire Bottom House at Perryville.
Tough to pick just one. Either the Lutheran Seminary at Gettysburg, the Dunker Church at Antietam or the McLean House at Appomattox. Since the Seminary is the only one that’s actually original, I guess I go with that.
I second the selection of Glen, the most iconic and most enduring Civil War building has to be the Lutheran Seminary in Gettysburg
Thomas Chandler’s plantation office building where Stonewall Jackson died
What about Blanford Church in Petersburg.
The gatehouse on Cemetery Hill in Gettysburg.
Meade’s HQ at Gettysburg, the Leister Farm.
Honorable mention to the ‘Confederate White House’ in Richmond.
Mountain House at Turner’s Gap!!!
A bookended pair: The President Street RR Station in Baltimore and the Camden Station on the other side of the Inner Harbor. Two magnificent structures that serve as witnesses to the first mayhem and carnage of the war, The Baltimore Riots of April 1861, when the Sixth Massachusetts marched for a mile and a half through a huge, murderous secessionist mob. The fate of Washington, D.C., and of Maryland (secede or remain loyal), hung in the balance.
Carter House at Franklin. A close second is the Ray House at Wilson’s Creek.
Lee Mansion, Carter House, Wilmer House at Appomattox.
Since the Jackson Death Site wasn’t actually on the battlefield, I’m going to go with the Innis House on the Fredericksburg battlefield. It stands right in front of the stone wall. I have had the privilege of interpreting that site several times during various events over the years, and it has always been a treat. From the bullet holes in the wall to the graffiti on the upstairs walls to the physical location on the battlefield to Martha Stephens’s grave next to the house, there are so many tangible connections to civilian and soldier stories there.
The Carnton Plantation house on the Franklin Battlefield … served as a field hospital for over 300 Confederate wounded … i remember the guide pointing out blood stains on the heart pine floors … on their front lawn is graveyard with about 1500 Confederate dead … for years, the mistress of house, Carrie McGavock, tended the graves and keep records of the soldiers names … i seem to recall that this is only military cemetery in the US on private property.
The front step is all that is left of the Burton farm on the Chancellorsville Battlefield where Stonewall found out he was not on the flank of the AoP