plaster wall repair bowling green kentucky

Plaster wall repair bowling green kentucky windows#

In 1966, the city of Bowling Green received a United States Department of Housing and Urban Development grant for half of the restoration costs. Their purpose was to save the old home and run it as a historic house museum. However, local citizens with family and social ties to the house-including Atwood and Juliette’s granddaughter, Margaret Hobson-banded together to form the first Hobson House Association board. Riverview at Hobson Grove was to be demolished to make way for a new golf course clubhouse. In October 1965, the city of Bowling Green purchased the dilapidated house for $1 and acquired 200 of the family’s 400 acres to form Hobson Grove Park and Golf Course on the west side of town. Seeing how much work the structure needed, she declined his offer. A gentleman from Franklin (in Simpson County) purchased the property to farm the 400 acres and tried to present the home to his niece as a wedding present. The old Hobson House, its plaster crumbling and roof leaking, still did not have electricity and proper indoor plumbing.

During this period, the house fell into serious disrepair, and water from a leaking roof caused a great deal of damage to the decoratively painted plaster parlor ceilings, once the showpiece of the home. Following the family’s departure, Riverview at Hobson Grove was home to tenant farmer families. Atwood and Juliette Hobson’s youngest son, George, left the property in 1950, when he was in his mid-80s. Although Thoroughbred farms typically are associated with the Lexington area, the Hobsons ran a successful operation in Bowling Green.įor nearly 80 years, children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren enjoyed gathering in the home. The Hobson farm became noted for its Thoroughbred horses.

Because of the shortage, the home wasn’t completed until 1872. After the war, the Hobsons vied with other Bowling Green citizens for building materials. Buckner put the structure to use as a munitions magazine and had soldiers stationed on the property. Simon Bolivar Buckner, who had served in Mexico with his brother, Edward Henry Hobson, and asked that the partially built house be spared. Hobson sent a message to Confederate Gen. Hobson, a strong Union supporter, thought quickly when Confederate forces took control of Bowling Green. However, with the start of the Civil War, progress halted. Handmade bricks were fired on the site, and the walls of the home’s basement began to take shape.

Today, visitors from around the world come to Riverview at Hobson Grove Historic House Museum to learn about its association with the Civil War, the family who called it home, and the impressive restoration carried out by the first board of directors 50 years ago.Ītwood Gaines Hobson, having acquired 400 acres of farmland on the outskirts of Bowling Green, began work on his estate in 1857. The reluctant conclusion of the family was that Riverview at Hobson Grove was beyond repair.

Plaster wall repair bowling green kentucky windows#

The abandoned home-its windows boarded and the grounds overgrown-gave few hints of its 19th-century grandeur. They could peer all the way down into the basement and survey the damage caused by a fire the previous winter. In the summer of 1965, descendants of Atwood Hobson stood next to a hole in the floor of a second-floor bedroom in the family home. Executive Director, Riverview at Hobson Grove