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Home for Sale 1615 Central – Central Gardens
This fully restored Central Gardens Colonial Revival Manor House, features a grand entry, spacious and beautiful living room, dining room, and library, accented with fine architectural features, French chandeliers, and much, much more. The house has a great flow and plenty of space for entertaining including 2 side porches and a courtyard. Professional landscaping, video security, gated drive, 2 car garage, and solar powered green house complement the property. The home is highly energy efficient. Take a short tour…
Thanks to Ben Teague for providing historic background and his insights on this wonderful home and its renovation:
THE OLD MAURY HOUSE, HISTORIC CENTRAL GARDENS
On the corner, at 1615 Central, restoring a house is normally a straightforward enough event, but Ben Teague could write his own book of Genesis about how to restore historic homes. Technically the house was born in the year 1911, when the retired Methodist Bishop Maury came back to Memphis, had the house designed for his style of living with an incredible library, with a paintings ceiling on canvas, unfortunately there were only traces of the canvas found during restoration. The house was built with exceptional care and construction techniques for the Bishop.
The house fell into disrepair when the relatives of Bishop Maury left the house un-attended for years until Frank Conklin purchased the old house; and, updated electrical, plumbing, and a new gas boiler, new roof, and restored the house in the late 1950’s.
While Teague and his Dutch wife were visiting family in Memphis for Christmas in 1969 from Holland, they ran across the house, it caught the fancy of the Teagues. However, returning in the early 70s Teague and friends bought the house while he was finishing engineering school at Memphis State University. Shortly afterwards, the Teague’s Family bought out his friends when his wife returned to Memphis from Holland. (He said a book could be written about their life between the time they both left Memphis and Teague’s return after retirement.) There had always been a direct flight to Amsterdam from Memphis until last year!
Teague retired as a Forensic Structural Engineer in 2008 and sold the 7500 square foot Historic Home on 21 acres, Taliaferro Hall in Williamson County, then traveled between The Netherlands and the US looking for another, much smaller, house to live in, which did not require restoration. This proved unsuccessful, since Teague would not accept the Euro exchange rate against the dollar back then. After a year back in EU, he heard that the old house on Central was on the market and the rest is history. However, the house as he found it did not have all the beautiful, original elegant lines of the original house that he and his wife had lived in; it had been, what he called “re-muddled”. However, only months earlier the house had been showcased in a national magazine. Teague had restored seven historic homes since he left Memphis, garnering a wealth of knowledge about restoration of historic homes and commercial buildings. The house now is a “MUST SEE” if you are going to purchase a perfectly restored elegant home in Central Gardens.
All the fireplaces had been removed from the second floor bedrooms, so Teague brought a few things with him for the restoration. The incredible crystal chandler in the dining room came from France, and the only fireplace mantle in the upstairs came from the Webb Mansion in Nashville, the mantle is a Robert Adams design, ca 1790, four more of which he had installed in Historic Taliaferro Hall where he had been living the last 25 years. [Continue Reading…]
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