Its presence atop a hill near Normandy is anything but subtle. This old house has been watching from its peak since around 1866. For those that loath math like me, that’s 156 years of being king of the hill.
It’s known as Beech Hall and was named after, well, the large amount of beech trees that were once located on the property. It was built on land granted to his father by Absalom Lowe Landis, who was a major in the 17th Tennessee Regiment during the Civil War. After he died, he left it to his daughters and it eventually was bought in its entirety by William Prentice Cooper, the husband of Landis’s granddaughter Argie. William was mayor of Shelbyville and they resided there, but summered at Beech Hall. Eventually their son, William Prentice Cooper Jr remodelled the cellar and also added a fireplace at the south end. He was elected to the senate in 1937 and elected the 39th governor of Tennessee in 1939. He was also appointed United States Ambassador to Peru in 1946.
I drove by the other day and they have really spruced it up. I’ll post before and after in my stories!
