This house in rural Alabama is very similar to one that figured prominently in my family’s history and I have wondered what one would call the “architectural style” (if that’s not too exalted a term for a simple dwelling). It appears that it was once a dogtrot house whose open hall was closed in, but I’m referring more to the steep angled dormers and slightly frilly decorations and other features.
Thanks for any suggestions.
I believe it’s Times New Roman. 
(Linky no worky)
Most irritating… sorry.
This page- it’s the ones that read 1870-80s Farmhouse in Bynum, AL.
I’d call it Carpenter Gothic.
It’s very much like the farmhouse in the famous painting “American Gothic”.
Sampiro, that really doesn’t look like a dogtrot closed in, it’s more ambitious than a dogtrot; from my knowledge, dogtrots did not have a second story.
The Bynum house is built as a whole, with chimneys on either end to heat the house, two chimneys on each side , and four fireplaces on each side of the house for heat. I see alot of old houses like this in NC and more in VA., but haven’t run across a specific term for that type of house. Curiously, I definetely did not see the same type of houses in abundance in MSPI, AL, LA. So the chimney heat thang must be in play.
It’s unusual but they can. When I was a kid the Rose-Morris House (moved to Montgomery and beautifully restored about 20 years ago) was our nearest non-related neighbor. A dogtrot’s second floor had to be lightweight though as it didn’t have as much support.
The reason I wondered if this was a closed in dogtrot was the oddity of multiple doors onto the porch. Of course I have seen that in houses that were neither duplex nor dogtrot- it’s always confusing which door to knock on.
Forgot to say: Thanks John M… I believe Carpenter Gothic is it exactly (the gables and the scrollwork). Though it’s small the house in the picture was probably a beauty in the late 19th century.
My sister owns a home on a river in South Alabama that’s similar (except in better repair). The upstairs has 8 bedrooms, all of them tiny- room for a single bed and a nightstand basically, or the size of a walk-in-closet save for one decent sized one. Downstairs there are three large rooms and a kitchen. Supposedly it was once a boardinghouse for loggers though I’ve wondered if it may have been a more lucrative establishment. 
Having rummaged through the McAlesters’ A Field Guide to American Houses and Rifkind’s A Field Guide to American Architecture, I’m not sure that it is any sort of “Gothic.”
None of the windows appear to have a Gothic Arch and neither of the forward facing gables have any ornamentation (i.e., they lack the typical decorated vergeboards of the Gothic style.)
The MacAlester book describes Folk Victorian as characterized by simple layout with a symmetrical façade*, and ornamented filligree on the porch. (When a spandrel is present, it is generally ornamented, but the photos of houses that lack a spandrel-fronted gable have unadorned gables while the porch is always decorated.) Full façade porches are common. The dates for that style are ca. 1870 - 1910.
In defense of a claim for Gothic, the paired forward gables arising directly from the wall and the steep pitched roof are consistent with the Gothic style. In addition, the eaves seem to lack the traditional Victorian brackets for support.
Whatever style you eventually assign to it, I suspect that “folk” or “carpenter’s” will have to prefix the term.
This may not be an architectural term, but it looks similar to what is referred to as a “shotgun” house in the midwest. This because if you open the windows at each end, you could shot a shotgun through them without damaging the house. (My grandfather-in-law’s explanation)
[hijack]Sampiro glad to see your name. I hope all is well with you and your’s[/hijack]
I think that shotgun houses are generally long and narrow and only one-story high, with the idea that firing a shotgun through the front door, the shot would go through every room in the house. (It may have taken on separate meanings, locally, of course.)
Looking over the OP, I also think that the house was built as we find it, not converted from a dogtrot. The roof line is quite straight where I would have expected a converted dogtrot with a “bridge” to have begun to sag by now. I would also have expected to see the ends more obviously “robust” in a converted dogtrot. (This is pure WAG on my part. of course.)
I’ve heard it called Folk Victorian. The way it was always described to me as usually an old farm house to which Victorian(ish) scrollwork was added. I can’t really tell from the picture if that’s what was done, but I’ve seen houses where it was obvious all the fancy gingerbread scrollwork stuff was later added.
An aside for those of you interested in this kind of stuff:
I was absolutely thrilled to discover recently that my house’s style has a name. It’s a foursquare house!
The real estate ads called it a “colonial,” but around here they seem to use that as a catchall term for every house that isn’t obviously something else. I just called it “A house. A regular house. Like if a little kid draws a picture of a house, that’s what my house looks like.” I like my house.
