In 1998, the fate of the birthplace and girlhood home of two famous Langhorne daughters hung in the balance – saved, practically at the eleventh hour, from demolition for a parking lot.  Instead, it has been refurbished as a museum celebrating the lives of Nancy Langhorne, Viscountess Astor – the first woman to sit in British Parliament – and Irene Langhorne Gibson, whose artist husband Charles Dana Gibson immortalized her as the "Gibson Girl," fashion ideal of turn-of-the-century America.

Only a couple of years after Nancy Astor's landmark election to the British House of Commons in 1919, her Danville birthplace, then facing Main Street's corner with Broad, was moved hack nearly 40 feet to make way for the three-story Caswell Apartments. The Langhorne’s former house, in turn – now realigned with a Broad Street address – was reborn as the Gwynn Apartments.  On May 5, 1922, the Gwynn's first tenants, Mr. and Mrs. Nelson Benton, entertained in their first-floor apartment two returning Langhorne daughters, Irene Gibson and Nancy Astor.  Here too, from the second-floor porch of this house, Danville's Nancy Langhorne addressed the citizens of her hometown as Lady Astor, M.P.  Over the ensuing eight decades, this historic structure has been home to a host of well-regarded citizens and professionals, including a descendant of Thomas Jefferson.

Thanks to the largesse of the longtime owner of the Danville Register & Bee, the late E. Stuart James Grant, not only was the house spared the wrecking ball, but Mrs. Grant also established the not for profit corporation which continues to develop and administer the historic landmark as a museum.  In 2006, the Langhorne House was added to the Virginia Landmarks Register and the National Register of Historic Places.