The foyer was built with rare, burled curly pine adorning the stairwell. Its original 19th-century wallpaper may be seen in the ceiling, while weather wainscoting continues down the hall. A Tiffany-stained glass-type fixture compliments the original stained glass in the front window at the corner side foyer, and the floors have been resanded and finished to preserve the heart pine. SUBMITTED Lebanon’s most resplendent Victorian Era-home, the I.W.P. Buchanan house at 428 West Main St., recently went on the market for $1,185,000.
Listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1979, the two-and-a-half-story, Queen Anne-style, brick-and-frame house sits on a 16-inch-thick limestone foundation and has five porches, a polygonal tower made of similar stonework and a double-run staircase in the entrance hall.
It was the first electrified residence in Lebanon and was built for Isaac William Pleasant Buchanan, who co-founded Castle Heights School (later a military academy) in 1902.
The 4,500-square-foot, five-bedroom, five-bathroom house is listed by Benchmark Realty.
Sellers Ashley and Reid Hinesley are Wilson County residents and owners of Reid and Co. Construction, which did the restoration.
“We had driven by the house and said if we ever had the chance to redo that house we would jump at the chance. Last year when it came on the market, we were blessed to get it,” said Ashley, adding they began the renovation in early 2020.
“We wanted to preserve and honor the history as much as possible and bring it back to life. A lot of it was too far gone, so we tried to do it incorporating modern conveniences. The kitchen was entirely redone.”
The first time they walked inside they said they were astonished by “the sheer amount of original wood” as well as 19th-century wallpaper that they were able to salvage and preserve.
Historic Lebanon executive director Kim Parks noted, “Buchanan was one of Lebanon’s most interesting residents. His home on West Main remains a fine example of high-style Victorian architecture.”
I.W.P. Buchanan was the son of Andrew Hays Buchanan, chair of the Department of Mathematics at Cumberland University from 1869 to 1909. The younger Buchanan received his B.A. and Ph.D. at Cumberland and organized Wilson County Bank in 1884, taught mathematics at Cumberland in the 1890s and co-founded Castle Heights with David Mitchell in 1902.
He died on Christmas Day 1943 at the age of 77.
According to the National Register of Historic Places Inventory Nomination Form compiled in 1978, Buchanan personally supervised the construction of his house. He reportedly went to North Carolina to select the burled, curvy pine used in the foyer and central hall.
