The entrepreneurship of two brothers, Charles and Peter Booth— a banker and a hardware store owner, respectively—gave form and substance to this solid brick foursquare house inspired by the popular Prairie and Georgian Revival styles. Riding the crest of the wave as Danville’s West End developed into the city’s first streetcar suburb, the Booths purchased four vacant lots situated between two late- Victorian homes. Following two years’ construction on their own massive homes—a pair built of solid Mt. Airy (NC) granite—the brothers opted for brick construction on this speculative dwelling next door.

On the eve of the First World War, it became home to Mr. James R. Muse and his wife, the former Nellie Walker. During some 20 years on West Main, Mr. Muse worked principally as a traveling salesman with a local dry goods firm. Here, in their comfortable West Main dwelling, the Muses raised several children. 

In 1937, Mr. and Mrs. Frank T. Grogan purchased the property where they lived for nearly half a century. Mr. Grogan worked for Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, later Esso (now Exxon- Mobil). That business tradition continued when the Grogan’s son Frank, Jr., began Grogan Oil Company, a well-regarded local business. It was in the hands of Frank and Eva Grogan that this house also became known, locally and far afield, as the Grogan Tourist Home, beginning just after World War II, when lodgings for traveling salesmen came into demand.

Following the Grogans’ stewardship, which ended in the mid 1980s, the house went into a precipitous decline. A series of owners used the house first as an insurance office and then a boarding house, further compromising its original floor plan.

Happily in 2001, current owners Dr. Sorina-Simion Rodgers and Stephen Rodgers, armed with vision and determination, turned what had become an ugly duckling back into a beautiful swan. They set about ‘unmuddling” the floor plan, creating a truly spectacular period kitchen, and enlarged master suite, complete with all-new infrastructure and curb appeal. 

Although a recent career move to Idaho wrenched the couple away most reluctantly from their three-year dream project, they are proud of their restoration legacy here. If these walls could talk, one can only imagine the stories of overnight regulars at Grogans Tourist Home, a precursor to today’s bed and breakfast inns.