The Heritage Foundation

Bob Parks and Drees Homes  presented a check for $20,000 to the Heritage Foundation of Franklin and Williamson County from the proceeds of the recent sale of one of Williamson County’s earliest log homes still standing known as Breezeway.

 

Bob Parks presented the check on Main Street Monday, Jan. 25, in front of Bob Parks Realty and the Franklin Theatre, which is the Heritage Foundation’s major project for 2010.

 

Breezeway, also known as the John Herbert House, is a double pen log house at the corner of Herbert & Breezeway drives and is now a centerpiece to the Breezeway development. Developers Bob Parks and Drees Homes worked with the Heritage Foundation of Franklin and Williamson County to first stabilize the structure and then find someone to purchase and restore the home.

 

“This is a property that the Heritage Foundation has been looking at for 20 years with hopes that it would be preserved for the future,” said Heritage Foundation Executive Director Mary Pearce. “It’s a credit to Bob Parks and Drees Homes that they were able to make this historic structure the centerpiece of the new Breezeway development on Clovercroft Road. It sits on more than three acres and backs up to more than 30 acres, so the site and its setting will be an amenity to future residents of the new neighborhood.”

 

Breezeway has been purchased by Skipper and Debbie Carlisle who are excited to have the opportunity to preserve this National Register property. Debbie says this is a lifelong dream of the couple, who have been collecting American antiques for years in hopes of finding an early 19th Century home.

 

This house and setting are protected by Franklin’s historic overlay zoning and additions and other changes and restoration will fall under Franklin’s design review guidelines.

 

“The Heritage Foundation has appreciated the opportunity to work with Bob Parks Realty and Drees Homes to save this piece of Williamson County history,” said Heritage Foundation President David Garrett. “Fortunately, developers and preservationists have learned how to work together for our mutual benefit.”

 

Historian Rick Warwick said residents in the area will remember this as the home of Dr. Walter Morgan for many years.

 

History of the Breezeway house— from the Virginia Bowman book Historic Williamson County

 

The John Herbert House on Clovercroft Road is a notable example of an early 19th-century double-pen log residence with an open breezeway or “dogtrot.” The construction of this type of log cabin was common in Williamson County in this time period, but few intact examples have survived. The Herbert House exemplifies the very typical evolution of double-pen log residences into frame vernacular Greek Revival design homes as the financial circumstances of the owners improved.

 

The Herbert House sits on a cut-stone foundation and has exterior end limestone chimneys. The main façade sports a one-story porch with Doric concrete columns added in 1910. The main entrance is at the location of the breezeway. An original enclosed stairway remains in the dogtrot.

 

To the west of the house are two contributing outbuildings: a ca. 1900 frame smokehouse and board-and-batten wash house with gable roof and stone chimney. These outbuildings are good examples of their type and tell the site’s history as a working farm. The John Herbert House was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1988.

 

For more information:

Mary Pearce

Executive Director, Heritage Foundation of Franklin & Williamson County

615-591-850 ext. 15

mpearce@historicfranklin.com