Pensacola's 1871 Classical Revival home and the Lady of the House
311 South Adams Street, Pensacola, FL 32502
Age
All Ages
Cost
$$
Historic Pensacola Village admission includes the Dorr House; see historicpensacola.org for current ticketing.
Access
Limited Access
Two-story 1871 historic home with stairs; first-floor partially accessible
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1871 · National Register of Historic Places (1974) · Pensacola Historic District · Post-Civil-War Classical Revival architecture · Florida Panhandle lumber-economy history
The Clara Barkley Dorr House at 311 South Adams Street in Pensacola was built in 1871. Clara Barkley married Eben Walker Dorr in 1849 and the couple lived in Bagdad, Florida, where Eben worked for a lumber company that drew on the Panhandle's substantial pine reserves. When Eben died in 1870, Clara commissioned the Pensacola house to accommodate herself and her five children. Construction occurred during a period of post-Civil-War economic recovery and lumber-industry expansion in northwest Florida.
The two-story house demonstrates Greek and Classical Revival features that were already considered out of fashion in other parts of the country by the 1870s. It is generally regarded as the best preserved example of post-Civil-War Classical Revival domestic architecture in the Pensacola Historic District. The house is located within Historic Pensacola Village, a complex of historic buildings and museums managed by the University of West Florida Historic Trust.
The Pensacola Heritage Foundation purchased the building in 1965 and undertook a restoration that returned the house to a Victorian-era museum-house presentation. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on July 24, 1974. The house is now interpreted as a Victorian period museum and forms part of the guided-tour rotation through Historic Pensacola Village.
Sources
Local tradition among Historic Pensacola Village docents holds that Clara Barkley Dorr remains a watchful presence in her former home. The most commonly repeated accounts include the scent of fresh-cut roses, identified by docents as Mrs. Dorr's favorite flower, occasionally drifting through a room and being followed by a noticeable cold spot. Visitors have also reported soft crying sounds from the upstairs sewing room, which was used by Mrs. Dorr in her later years.
A more lighthearted strain of the lore holds that Mrs. Dorr does not approve of what she would have considered improper behavior on the tour. Multiple docents over the years have repeated that visitors wearing short skirts before the floor-to-ceiling mirror in the formal sitting room have reported the sensation of fabric being tugged downward, as if someone were attempting to make the skirt longer. Docents present this account as folk tradition rather than documented event.
None of these accounts has been independently documented in newspaper or historical-society records. The lore is included in Historic Pensacola Village's evening-tour programming and is generally treated by staff as a benign continuation of Mrs. Dorr's longtime association with the house.
Notable Entities
A 1871 Classical Revival home built by Clara Barkley Dorr after the death of her husband Eben in 1870. The guided tour covers Victorian-era family life, the Pensacola lumber economy, and the building's restoration by the Pensacola Heritage Foundation in 1965.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
Frederick, MD
Schifferstadt is one of the oldest surviving houses in Frederick, completed in 1758 by Elias Brunner and his wife Albertina on the family's 303-acre farm tract. The Brunners named the property after their hometown in the German Palatinate. The Frederick County Landmarks Foundation purchased the house in 1974 and opened it as an architectural museum.
Hastings, MN
The LeDuc Historic Estate is one of the United States' best-preserved Gothic Revival residences in the Andrew Jackson Downing manner. William Gates LeDuc and his wife Mary built the Hastings, Minnesota home between 1862 and 1866 along the bluff above the Vermillion River. The estate is now operated by the Dakota County Historical Society.
San Diego, CA
Villa Montezuma is the 1887 Queen Anne residence built in San Diego's Sherman Heights for pianist, author, and Spiritualist Benjamin Henry Jesse Francis Shepard, later known by the pen name Francis Grierson. The home is owned by the City of San Diego, operated as a museum by the Friends of the Villa Montezuma, and was saved from demolition in the 1960s by Save Our Heritage Organisation.