Of the 11,037 parcels in Madison County with information on the year a home was built, just 132 were built prior to 1909, Madison County Tax Office records show. That number now stands at 131 after Mars Hill University offered up a home more than a century old for local fire departments to burn down in a training exercise.
The university is now defending the decision to hand over the more than 3,000-square-foot-home, which it purchased for $250,000 in 2013. Local advocates of historical preservation and affordable housing have criticized the move, calling “maddening” and a “waste.
“I’m surprised with what gets people’s interest and what does not get people’s interest,” Mars Hill University President Dan Lunsford said of community backlash during a phone interview the day before the building would burn.
Few had more interest in the historical aspects of the home than architect and architectural historian Taylor Barnhill.
“It is a good example of turn-of-the-century architecture,” he said, speaking about 48 hours before the home burned to the ground June 17. Barnhill shared his insights on the Hickory Drive address shortly after touring the home’s interior under the supervision of fire department personnel. “It’s well-constructed and shows good craftsmanship. It has Dutch-influenced features including clipped gables and flared eaves. Architecturally and historically, it is a significant building.
The home certainly had significance for Ann Huff Toney. “I lived here. I had my second birthday inside this house,” she said, standing outside the home’s driveway two days before it would go up in smoke. “I have memories here.”
Toney said her grandfather, Joseph Bascomb Huff, purchased the home in 1905. The Huff family are descendants of Edward Carter, who donated four acres of land in 1856 to build what would become Mars Hill College in 1859, according to Barnhill. Dean of the college and, later, the head of the English department, Huff reared six sons inside the home, which included a basement, attic and two living floors, Toney said,
“There are not many like it left,” she said of her paternal grandfather’s home. “I could name – using fingers on one hand – the important homes left in the Mars Hill area.”
Lunsford, however, rejected any characterization of the home as historic.
“It’s an old house, a lovely old house in its day without question,” he said. “Still, there was never any information given to me or any that I have found that has connected this to historical events of the county. If there are, they were not brought to me
He added further that the home “ceased to be important to the Huff family several years ago,” citing the sale of the property outside the family for $225,000 in 2005. When the property went back on the market in 2013, Lunsford said, “People could have paid more for it than we did.”
For the past two years, Lunsford said, the building sat vacant. “This will become an attractive nuisance for vandals and for people to occupy for nefarious purposes,” he said of university concerns about the property. “We asked, ‘Can we do something about it?’”
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