This two-story weatherboarded structure, tucked behind the three-story apartment on Main at Broad, Is one of the city’s preservation success stories. Threatened with demolition for a parking lot in 1988, the house was purchased later that year by Mrs. E. Stuart James Grant after a community fundraislng effort failed to raise enough money to purchase it. As the birthplace of two sisters of international renown, this house occupies a singular place among Danville’s wealth of historical buildings. It stands today as a tangible part of the legacy left the city by Mrs. Grant, the late owner and publisher of the Danville Register and Bee. 

When constructed in 1873, the house faced Main Street. More or less a cottage a the time, it was built for Chiswell Dabney Langhone, his wife and growing family. A tobacconist and auctioneer, Mr. Langhorne—a native of Lynchburg, Virginia—is said to have devised the present melodious chant used to sell tobacco based on the sonorities of the ancient Gregorian chant of the Catholic Church. Late in 1864 this weary veteran of the War Between the States married Nancy Witcher Keene of Cottage Hill in Pittsylvania County just west of Danville. Of five children born in their house on Main at Broad, two— Irene and Nancy—achieved worldwide fame. Irene, born here in 1873, married the artist Charles Dana Gibson who immortalized her as the prototype for his “Gibson Girl,” the feminine ideal of the 1890s and early 1900s. Nancy, born here In 1879, married Viscount William Waldorf Astor. After the Viscount gave up his seat In Parliament, Nancy ran in his stead. Upon election the Viscountess became the first woman ever to sit in the British House of Commons. 

In May of 1922, three years after her stunning victory, Nancy returned to Danville with her husband Waldorf and sister Irena Just prior to their arrival the sisters’ birth house had been moved back from Main Street some 38 feet to its present site and converted to apartments. From the second-floor porch of this house, Danville’s Nancy Langhorne addressed the citizens of her hometown as Lady Astor, M.P. 

After the house was spared from the wrecking ball, Mrs. Grant established a not-for- profit organization to restore the house for public use and as a museum to Interpret the Langhorne legacy, especially the life and times of Lady Astor and the Gibson Girl. The Lady Astor Preservation Trust has completed the first phase of that mission by restoring the roof and exterior and by rehabilitating the second floor apartments for residential use in accordance with recommendations made by the Virginia Department of Historic Resources. The Trust is now In the process of developing a plan of action for adapting the first floor, which is open today, as a museum within this historic house.