As a first for our tour guests and with the abundant proliferation of local authors and artists, the Danville Historical Society is pleased to invite you to “preservation hall” in the 1903 carriage house constructed by James Gabriel Penn, and his second wife, Sallie Johnson, of Madison, Georgia. From 1887, the local landbooks tell a story of grandiose additions and expansions by the Penns culminating in the purchase and demolition of the James E. Lipscomb home, from which the brick was used to build a carriage house for several of Mrs. Penn’s carriages and servants’ quarters upstairs. This Lipscomb home was built by the brother of William H. Lipscomb, whose home is open for tour today at 854 Main Street. The Lipscomb homes were built on an eighty-foot shared lot as mirror images of each other with long side porches that faced each other.

For decades, the carriage house apartment was home to Mr. and Mrs. W. S. Norman, Jr., and their family. From the exterior, it is apparent that the Levines are restoring the grandeur of the main dwelling and consented to opening the carriage house, which is a project-in-progress, for our gift shop.

As one enters the black iron gates to the carriage house at 862 Main Street, the elaborate formal garden and pergola to the left are too inviting to miss the opportunity to imagine its glory in full bloom in the spring and summer. Roses, perennials, crape myrtles, wood hyacinths and other botanical specimens against a backdrop of boxwood lead down the brick path to the Victorian well house.

The Historical Society has invited Adrian O’Connor, Frank Carroll, Clara Fountain, Mary Cahill, Gary Grant, Emyl Jenkins, and Forrest Altman to sell and autograph their books in the charming upstairs parlor during the tour hours. Society members also will be selling the reproductions of Pollock’s 1885 Sketchbook of Danville, Gibson Girl postcards from this year’s Spring Tableaux of Charles Dana Gibson’s illustrations, hand-colored etchings of our Robert Marsh series and Delius in Danville books in anticipation of the Delius Festival planned for May29- June 1, 1997, when the city celebrates the British composer’s return visit to Danville one hundred years ago. For more information about the Delius Festival, please contact the Visitor Center at (804) 793-5422.