Chabannes - Sealy House

Chabannes - Sealy House. . The Chabannes - Sealy House was built in 1847 by Hollis C. Kidder. The house passed through several owners until it was sold in 1920 to Julia Nuzon Morris. Her daughter, Julia Morris, married Norbert Chabannes. That family lived here until the house was sold in 2003. Restored in 2005, the house exemplifies the Creole cottage style rarely seen as far north in Alabama as Tuscaloosa. It is distinguished by its gable roof sloping in an unbroken plane from front to back to accommodate a full-length gallery inset into the main body of the house., Side B , The roof shelters an attic story. This house has the subtle changes that characterized inland examples of the Creole cottage where the roof pitch is less pronounced than in such cottages on the Gulf Coast., When Tuscaloosa fell to Federal troops under General John Croxton in April 1865, horses were quartered in the front hall while soldiers searched the town for food and for Confederate Senator Robert Jemison, who eluded capture. Mounted in the front yard is a cast iron bell forty inches in diameter manufactured by the C.S. Bell Company in Ohio. For decades the bell remained buried upside down in the side yard, with only the bottom rim of the bell visible. The dates of its manufacture and its burial are unknown.