Oakleigh House Museum

Cotton broker James W. Roper built Oakleigh in 1833, a raised Greek Revival house with its main floor a storey above the ground against Mobile's heat and floods. The Irwin family bought it in 1852 and lived there for three generations, until 1960. Several of them died in the house, among them Margaret, Corrine, Alfred and T.K. Irwin. It is now a house museum run by the Historic Mobile Preservation Society, furnished with Mobile pieces from the 1830s to 1900. Staff describe figures in 19th-century dress looking down from the windows and balconies, whom they take to be Irwins. One staff member's first encounter was a woman watching her from an upstairs window, and people who have stayed overnight report piano music through the house when no one is playing.