Page 10 - HTE_Spring2021

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Music isn’t the only history you’ll find in The Shoals. In Tuscumbia you can visit Ivy Green, the birthplace of Helen Keller. In the home everything is original. Furniture. Newspaper clippings. Photographs. You’ll get to stand in the middle of her life. The tours are short and concise, but filled with more information than we’d ever learned before.
Ivy Green has chosen passionate
guides who walk you through the
downstairs rooms of the house.
You also get to do a self-guided
portion upstairs and through the
Helen Keller museum.
The Rosenbaum House in
Florence is the only standing Frank
Lloyd Wright designed structure in
the state of Alabama. He
designed the home in 1939 for a
local family, the Rosenbaums. His
main goal was to break away from
the typical European architectural
styles widely used at the time. He
called it Usonian design, and the
Rosenbaum House is classified
as the purest form of Usonian design in existence. Wright wanted the home to mesh seamlessly with
the landscape. The inside is outside and the outside is inside. The house is brown to blend in with the surroundings. The foundation was laid to follow the curvature of the ground. Clean lines. Neutral tones. Huge windows, which were our favorite part. In the living room there is an entire wall of them, letting in beautiful natural light. This allowed for minimal
artificial lighting sources, furthering the natural design of the home.