Quietdale, 401 Quietdale Drive Northeast, Huntsville, Madison County, AL

Significance: The Robinson family, their relatives and intimate associates have bequeathed Huntsville an enduring legacy of buildings beyond the Robinson house, familiarly known as Quietdale, that enhances the city's built environment and provides a living connection with the city's beginnings and early settlement patterns. The 1981 National Register nomination by Robert Gamble states: "Quietdale is a lucid example of the mid-nineteenth century shift in American architecture from an unalloyed neo-classicism to the freer forms of romantic eclecticism. Its design combines elements from both schools, retaining the basic form and proportions of neo-classicism while incorporating details which express the newer trend in architectural fashion. Thus, superimposed upon a symmetrical five-bay facade -the chief motif of which is a restrained entablature -is an ornate wooden porch composed of a series of shallow Tudoresque arches that carry eaves bracketed in the Italianate fashion. The same pattern is repeated in the architrave framing the inset doorway, as well as in a secondary porch extending along the west side of the house....Quietdale is significant as one of the earliest expressions of this impulse anywhere in the Huntsville area. Moreover, it is one of the few suburban mid-nineteenth century mansions to have survived the city's later expansion."
Survey number: HABS AL-1000
Building/structure dates: 1851-1853 Initial Construction
Building/structure dates: 2017 Subsequent Work
National Register of Historic Places NRIS Number: 82002054