Oakdene Place

Oakdene Place is a compact residential neighborhood in Rome, Georgia, laid out with curving streets on rolling land south of the Etowah River. Development began after a local businessman's failed attempt to build up the area in the late 1870s; an investment company subdivided it in 1890. The northern section holds large wood-frame Queen Anne and Neoclassical houses built for prominent families, with porches, brackets, stained glass and detailed interior woodwork, set among stone walls, iron fences and informal plantings. A stove foundry built in 1903 at the southern edge halted the planned upscale growth, and in the 1910s and 1920s modest mill housing, including shotgun houses and duplexes, filled the south end. The district was listed for what it shows about suburban planning, architecture, naturalistic landscaping and the close mix of industrial leaders and workers in Rome. Woodrow Wilson also met his future wife at the Brower House here in the early 1880s.