Arlington Antebellum Home & Gardens

Arlington Antebellum Home & Gardens, also known as the Arlington Historic Home, is a historic plantation house with 6 acres (24,000 m2) of manicured gardens located near downtown Birmingham, Alabama. The two-story frame home was erected between 1845 and 1850 and exhibits Greek Revival design from the antebellum period. The home is a decorative arts museum, with 19th-century furniture, textiles, silver, and paintings on display. A refurbished garden room is utilised for special events in the garden. Arlington was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on December 2, 1970, and has also been referred to as the Mudd-Munger House.

The traditional Greek renaissance style The architecture of this two-story residence was built in 1822 by a settler from Georgia named Stephen Hall. 

• [i] Hall travelled to Birmingham to help with the construction of a new courthouse and jail. He purchased the original seventeen acres of property and began work on the Arlington Home and Gardens. Samuel
•  [ii] Hall, Hall's son, acquired the plantation in 1840, but died two years later, leaving his loved ones with a significant debt to settle. 
• [iii] As a result of this debt, the family was compelled to auction off the plantation for $600 to a man named William Mudd. 
• [iv] Mudd was a Circuit Court Judge at Elyton for nearly twenty years until resigning in 1883. 
• [v] Judge Mudd acquired an adjacent eighty-acre parcel and
• [vi] significantly expanded the location, which he dubbed "The Grove."

In 1846, he married Florence Earle and began construction of a bigger residence to replace Hall's, which he named The Grove after the abundant ancient hardwood trees that surrounded the house site. Enslaved workmen and artisans erected a splendid eight-room home in the Greek Revival style under Mudd's commands. (https://www.bhamwiki.com/w/Arlington Antebellum museum Home %26 Gardens). Built between 1845 and 1850 at Elyton, the second county seat of Jefferson County, by William S. Mudd, Birmingham, a city Mudd helped to develop, eventually grew to cover the old site of Elyton. Arlington is Birmingham's sole antebellum house and one of the few remaining structures from Elyton's period. Union forces utilised Arlington while plotting the destruction of the University of Alabama.

The property went through several owners and in 1902 became the home of Robert S. Munger. Over the next twenty years he did many renovations including plumbing and electric lights. He had another structure moved across the street behind the main house which was used for a kitchen, dining room, sun parlor and sleeping quarters. Mr. Munger also had one of the first “motor cars” in Birmingham.

In 1953, a citizen's group and the City of Birmingham raised money to purchase Arlington.

The ashes of former Birmingham mayor George G. Siebels, Jr. are interred at Arlington.