Oakwood - Fayette, Missouri
Posted by: 
BruceS
N 39° 08.925 W 092° 40.594
15S E 527948 N 4333333
Also known as Abiel Leonard House, Oakwood is a historic house built 1834-36 on the outskirts of Fayette, Missouri.
Waymark Code: WM8QY8
Location: Missouri, United States
Date Posted: 05/04/2010
Views: 1
1939
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2010
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Oakwood, the Abiel Leonard House, is significant for its association with the life of Abiel Leonard, a person of significance in Missouri history and for its distinctive characteristics of federal style architecture in Missouri.
Abiel Leonard was one of the most successful and distinguished lawyers of his time, 1819-1863, and his career culminated in his appointment to the state Supreme Court in 1855. Leonard was a leader of the Whig Party in Missouri prior to the Civil War and served a term in the state legislature, was nominated to unsuccessfully oppose Thomas Hart Benton for the Senate in 1834, chaired the state committee at the Whig Convention in 1839, and was generally active in Whig affairs throughout his career, favoring the American System, supporting the institution but not extension of slavery.
Oakwood exemplifies aspirations toward elegance and gentility in central Missouri over three generations, is one of the earliest surviving brick I houses in mid-Missouri, has federal stylistic features that place it in one of Howard County's major federal phases and make it an important example of the federal style in the western United States, has a Victorian classic hallway added in the 1890's that, is a fine local example of this mode and other alterations dating from 1850-51, 1856-58, ca. 1890's, ca. 1938 which exemplify the efforts of the Leonard family to "update" their house to keep it abreast with changing standards of taste and pretention.
Oakwood was the center of a farming operation based on slave labor and has one of the finest ensembles of antebellum outbuildings to be found in Missouri. - from National Register Nomination Form