One of the oldest houses in Starkville will find new life when it opens as a bed and breakfast this fall.
Lee Carson and his wife, Jennifer, have purchased the Cedars — more commonly known as the Montgomery House — an antebellum home on Old West Point Road. The house is one of two remaining antebellum homes in Starkville, along with the Gillespie-Jackson house at the corner of Louisville Street and Highway 12.
The Montgomery House was built by David Montgomery, a slave owner and member of the state Legislature, around 1840, according to the building’s National Register of Historic Places file. It remained in the family for more than a century until former Starkville Municipal Judge William Eshee and his wife purchased it in 1999. The house went up for sale in 2017, and the Carsons purchased it in March.
Jennifer said they considered purchasing the home in 1999, with the thought of turning it into a bed and breakfast, but the timing ultimately wasn’t right. Now, she said, they see an opportunity to follow that old dream while saving one of the last antebellum homes in town.
“We’re back for more now,” she said. “We thought, ‘Here it is. It’s available. So let’s do it.'”
Jennifer said the Carsons plan to open the Montgomery Bed and Breakfast at the Cedars by Aug. 1. The board of alderman approved a conditional use request to allow the business in the home 5-0, with Ward 3 Alderman David Little absent from Tuesday’s meeting.
The home has four bedrooms, which Jennifer said can sleep up to four people each. The Carsons have work still to go to install bathrooms in the home and parking on the property. They’re both alumni of Mississippi State University’s College of Architecture, and Jennifer said they hope to retain as much of the building’s original character as possible while they work.
“That’s about all we’re going to do to it,” she said. “We don’t want to alter the exterior structure in any way. We want it to remain as authentic as possible, but having a few amenities that we require today.
“It’s survived and been a beautiful home for almost 200 years now without people messing it up too much,” she added. “You don’t want to mess up something that’s not broken.”
Preserving a historic home
Maintaining historic properties has become a particularly sensitive topic for Starkville in recent years, as the city has lost a number of older homes to redevelopment. Three century-old homes were torn down on the site where the Midtown development now sits, and an old home at the corner of Gillespie and Louisville streets was recently demolished for a residential development.
A developer is considering the site of the Gillespie-Jackson home, at the corner of Louisville and Highway 12, for a mixed-use commercial and residential development. Should the development go forward, the house would need to be removed, either through relocation or demolition.
“We love the fact that we’ll be able to save the (Cedars) and use it for a purpose that will help the community,” Jennifer said. “It will be opened up to the public so people can take tours. They can do events there. They can stay there — it’ll just be a little bit of Starkville charm that we can share with people.”
Ward 4 Alderman Jason Walker said he was impressed with the plan and the care shown to the property, such as how the planned parking works around the existing trees instead of removing them.
Neighborhood concerns
The project has met with some concern from neighbors.
Risa Bruner, in a letter included in the agenda packet for Tuesday’s aldermen meeting, said she wasn’t directly concerned about the idea of a small family bed and breakfast in the neighborhood. However, she said she had concerns about the scale of the proposed business and the problems that may come with a transient population moving in and out of the neighborhood.
Frances McDavid, who lives near the property, spoke to the board during Tuesday’s meeting to say that, while she doesn’t oppose the change, it’s worth considering what future impacts it might have on the neighborhood. She said she had some concerns about things like weddings and the disruptions they might have, and whether the bed and breakfast might lead to development on lands near the house that wouldn’t currently suit the neighborhood.
“I think one of the concerns is those weekend kinds of housing where you’ve got transient, football weekend kind of neighborhoods that might develop in that acreage,” she said. “That’s not before you tonight and I’m aware of that, but what is here is that you need to be aware of is, is this the kind of change in the neighborhood that you would start saying the precedent has been set?”
Walker said he understood the concerns, but he doesn’t view the bed and breakfast as leading to a change in the neighborhood.
“At some point in the future if there were to be a request looking at changing a condition, that would be up to each individual alderman,” Walker said. “I will say that if I were in that position, I would not consider this change of condition in the neighborhood — primarily because only conditional uses are being allowed in that (property).”
Jennifer said the Carsons hope to keep neighborhood disruptions to a minimum.
“We want to be a good neighbor,” she said. “We will do everything neighborly possible — I hope they don’t even know we’re there a majority of the time.”
Alex Holloway was formerly a reporter with The Dispatch.
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