Chighizola House

The Chighizola House sits almost directly behind the Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in downtown Mobile. My wife Cay and I had passed it for years. It was beautiful, remarkably intact — and in serious danger.

The house had been on Mobile's Imperiled Buildings list since the 1970s. A 1957 appraisal was brutally dismissive: "The house has no value except for salvage." Yet in an odd way, neglect helped protect it. The Hoffman family purchased the property in 1927 and used the house primarily for storage for decades. Because they made relatively few alterations, it survived as one of Mobile's least-altered antebellum houses.

Cay and I purchased it in 2024 and set out to restore it — not simply renovate it. That distinction matters. Historic restoration requires restraint. The goal isn't to make an old building look new. It is to understand what belongs there, preserve what survives, and carefully reconstruct what has been lost. Every decision becomes an investigation into materials, craftsmanship and history.

The deeper I researched the Chighizola House, the more personal the story became. Jacques Chighizola acquired the property in 1824 and became part of the prosperous merchant community that helped shape Mobile during its great cotton-port era. While researching the family at the History Museum of Mobile, I unexpectedly discovered connections between the Chighizola family and my own grandmother's Spanish Gulf Coast ancestors. A project I thought I had chosen seemed somehow connected to the people and places that had shaped me.

Preservation isn't nostalgia. Historic buildings give a city continuity. They allow us to physically experience the layers of people, craftsmanship, commerce and culture that created the place we inherited. Their value isn't merely historical — reusing older buildings preserves character, supports walkability, reduces waste, and encourages investment around them.

The Chighizola House may be the clearest expression of the idea behind My Town: the past isn't something we leave behind. It is something we carry forward. Sometimes our job isn't to invent something new. It's to recognize what is already there — and care enough to give it another life.