Settlers wouldn’t recognize this $2.75 million log home
Log houses such as the home at 5141 Granny White Pike are seldom found in Nashville, even though almost all the homes built by the area’s first immigrants – mainly from England, Ireland and Scotland – were of that style.
The Native Americans, who seem to have overlooked recording their deeds proving their ownership of the property, constructed their homes of stone, branches and even brush. The earliest evidence of the Native Americans presence in Middle Tennessee was in 12,000 years ago. As they had had not seen the castles and outbuildings that were constructed of stone in the lands across the pond, the locals constructed their houses more in the temporary cottage motif.
When the Europeans arrived in the so-called New World, they capitalized on the abundance of trees in the newly acquired habitat and constructed log cabins. With only axes and saws required to convert these trees into building logs, the settlers were in business. They had the epitome of affordable housing, with no cost for the land or the building materials. No wonder they created Thanksgiving.
While available at no charge and abundant, wood had a severe shortcoming – it would rot over time.
As the forests were devoured and the buildings shifted to bricks and mortar, the log cabins vanished from the landscape.
More for nostalgic purposes than anything, log houses have been constructed from time to time as a tip of the coonskin hat to days of yore. The house at 5141 Granny White Pike, about a half-mile north of Radnor Lake, is one of these homes. With its lot stretching 9.38 acres, the home was given a name, “Graywood,” the shade of the wood these log homes develop as they age.
But this house was so named because it was “renovated by local designer Lynn Gray,” says listing agent Katie Morrell, who adds Gray incorporated the hiking trails with existing landscape throughout the hillside.
Unlike the original dwellings, which consisted of a main room used for cooking, eating and gathering with perhaps a sleeping quarter in a loft, this home has three bedrooms, two bathrooms and a half bathroom and 3,293 square feet of living space.
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In the early days of this country’s civilization, residents relieved themselves in a building that was understandably outside the home – an outhouse. Unlike today, when there are full and half bathrooms, these outhouses had no running water. What fraction of bathroom would that be?
It would be years before anyone thought of dumping waste into previously pristine creeks and streams. Progress, they call it.
Baths were administered in the main room in large tubs in the colder months, requiring the heating of water over a fire, a process requiring hours to accomplish as the entire family would use the same tub and water.
In most cases, the family bathed in order of age with the youngest child going last before the mirky, dirty water was poured into the yard. The phrase “throw the baby out with the bathwater” is said to have originated from this practice.
The roofs in these structures were of the thatched variety and consisted for high grass, branches, straw and mud. Family pets would often make their way into the roofing materials to fashion sleeping quarters. When heavy rains bombarded the homes, the materials would give way and the domesticated animals along with a snake or lizard or two would be dislodged and tumble into the lofts.
Another phrase – “raining cats and dogs” – was born.
Those slumbering in Graywood need not worry about falling animals since the roof is made of manufactured asphalt single, says Morrell, who describes the house as country living in the city. No outhouses here.
The house sold for $2.75 million. Ivy Vick represented the buyer, who she says “has big plans for it.”
That amount of money would have bought Manhattan 114,588 times based on the $24 in trinkets allegedly paid for the land in 1626.
Richard Courtney is a licensed real estate broker with Fridrich and Clark Realty and can be reached at [email protected].