Mitchell House (Lebanon, Tennessee)
Mitchell House | |
Location | 106 N. Castle Heights Ave., Lebanon, Tennessee, Wilson County, Tennessee |
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Coordinates | 36°12′40″N 86°18′29″W / 36.21111°N 86.30806°W |
Area | 2 acres (0.81 ha) |
Built | 1910 |
Architect | Thompson, Gibel & Asmus |
Architectural style | Neo-Classical Revival |
NRHP reference No. | 79003435 |
Added to NRHP | 1979 |
The Mitchell House is a Neo-Classical Revival Style building in
While the Mitchells lived in the home, it was used for many community events and weddings. In 1919, there was a
While living in California, Dr. Mitchell deeded the house to his children to keep it from being foreclosed on by creditors. The children would never live in the house and sold it to Castle Heights Military Academy in 1936.[2][3]
Castle Heights turned the home into a junior school. The upstairs was remodeled into living quarters for the students and the downstairs was turned into classrooms.[3] During this time a kitchen, restrooms, and an apartment were added to the building which increased its size to 11,500 square feet[4] and it became known as MacFadden Hall. The boys who lived in the hall were known as goobers and the house was called Goober School by the students. The building would remain a junior school for fifty years, until the academy closed in 1986.[2][5]
After the closure of Castle Heights, the house would be abandoned for twelve years until it was purchased by
Evins and Cracker Barrel set about restoring the home and found the original construction drawings. The drawings did not have details for the inside of the building so the restoration crew had to use old photos they found in yearbooks and newspapers as well as memories of former students and teachers. The restoration took less than a year to complete even though many windows, panels, and ceilings, as well as the porches, had to be replaced.[2] Mike Manous was the architect who oversaw the restoration[3] with a budget of $2 million.[4]
After the restoration the building became the home of Cracker Barrel Old Country Store Corporate Headquarters (CBRL Group, Inc.).[4][5]
In 2013, Cracker Barrel sold the building to Sigma Pi Fraternity which used the building as its international headquarters. No purchase amount was made public but the house had been listed for $1,095,000 on loopnet.com.[6] The fraternity had a museum and meeting spaces on the first floor with offices located on the second floor.[5] The fraternity sold the property to the city of Lebanon on May 17, 2019, and moved its headquarters to Nashville.[7]
The building was listed as a historic landmark by the state of Tennessee and the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.[1][6]
References
- ^ a b "Mitchell House". National Register of Historic Places.
- ^ a b c d e f "Historic Mitchell House of Lebanon". Wilson Living Magazine. November 1, 2008.
- ^ a b c d e f "History". Mitchell House.
- ^ a b c "Mitchell House, Cracker Barrell". Manous Design.
- ^ a b c d Felkins, Jared (November 8, 2013). "Cracker Barrel sells Mitchell House to fraternity". Lebanon Democrat. Lebanon, Tennessee. Archived from the original on August 7, 2017. Retrieved August 7, 2017.
- ^ a b "Sigma Pi buys Mitchell House". The Wilson Post. Lebanon, Tennessee. November 6, 2013. Retrieved August 7, 2017.
- ^ "Divestiture of the Mitchell House". Retrieved 25 October 2021.