Historic House

LIBERTY - The Casey County Hospital Ladies Auxiliary is reorganizing and one of the first fundraisers will be a tour of homes, said Nancy Porter, a former auxiliary president who is helping with the project. The tour will be Dec. 16-17 and five houses have been selected and at least 10 or 12 are needed, said Porter. A round house, a historic house and a new house have been slated for the tour. Tickets will be $20 and good for both days. People who have homes they would like to show are asked to contact Porter or Jackie McAnelly.

The historic Philip Yeiser Sr. house, more recently know as the Gwinn House, on Lexington Avenue was built between 1804-1808. An account about the house in Calvin Morgan Fackler's "Early Days in Danville" calls the house "the first ambitious attempt at a mansion" in Danville. Fackler claims the house was built in 1804 although a knocker once attached to the front door was dated 1808. The house also is known as the "Chestnut House" for the family who added the balustrades to enclose the roofs on one-story wings on either side of the two-story main house.

As Ephraim McDowell Regional Medical Center prepares for construction of a three-story patient tower in the visitors' parking lot, questions have come up about the future of the historic McClure-Barbee House as well as Martin Luther King Boulevard and Figg Alley. The hospital has no plans for the McClure-Barbee House and has never discussed tearing it down, according to Mary Begley, a spokeswoman for McDowell. In fact, she said, the hospital doesn't own the house. McDowell deeded the house to the McClure-Barbee Foundation in 1992 with the understanding that the hospital would get it back in July 2007.

A rain storm did not stop the presentation Wednesday of an original oil painting to McDowell House and Apothecary Shop. The painting by the late local artist Louise Wilson Wilkinson depicts the arrival of Jane Todd Crawford to Dr. Ephraim McDowell's house on South Second Street on a snowy day in December 1809. "Neither rain, hail nor snow prevented us from delivering this painting," Harry Nickens, president of the Ephraim McDowell Health Care Foundation, said as he and Barry Michael, president of the Ephraim McDowell Regional Medical Center made the presentation.

HARRODSBURG - About 12 more months and an additional $250,000 are needed to complete the restoration of historic Diamond Point. In years past, the house was one of the first things visitors saw when they entered the first permanent English settlement west of the Allegheny Mountains. The 7,000-square-foot house was built in the 1840s and was purchased by the city's Main Street program in March 2003. About $650,000 in state and local grants will be spent on a new roof, restoration of the exterior, rewiring the house, an addition to the back of the house, and the heating and cooling system.

Mayor John W.D. Bowling and Commissioner Chester Kavanaugh changed their votes Monday, allowing the city of Danville to spend $11,000 for a storm sewer on Second Street on behalf of McDowell House. Without the work, the house would have been in danger of losing $325,000 of grant money it received to fix water problems on its property. None of that money could have been spent to fix water problems on the city street. Kavanaugh and Bowling had voted against the project in November, along with Commissioner Ryan Owens, who was not at Monday's meeting.

When it rains, water flows off the McDowell House property and into Second Street. There is no storm sewer, so the water goes right back into the basement of the historic house. Preservation architect Joe Opperman has said that the house and its collection of furniture and portraits are threatened by moisture. Water runs from the yard and the roof into the basement. There are mushrooms growing on a basement wall and the house has lost two furnaces in 20 years. The McDowell House board of managers has been awarded $325,000 in grants to fix the water problems, but can't spend a dime of it until the city of Danville agrees to install a storm sewer.

What are you planning to do this August? Apparently, a lot of people are planning to take part in the U.S. 127 yard sale. The Boyle County Convention and Visitors Bureau has already started fielding calls about the event that stretches along U.S. 127 from Ohio to Alabama, which brings it through Mercer, Boyle, Lincoln and Casey counties. Bureau director Kay Berggren and assistant Carolyn Crabtree didn't expect quite that deluge of interest this early in the year. "We're getting several calls a week," Berggren said.

HARRODSBURG - After years of work by local preservationists, one of the oldest brick structures in Mercer County has been restored and was opened to the public at a ceremony Thursday. The Thomas Logan House was built in 1795 on land that now holds Anderson-Dean Community Park. Logan held the job similar to today's road supervisor. When industrialist and philanthropist Ralph Anderson bought and donated the land for the park, a large old house on the back of the property was found to have been built around the 18th century structure.