600 S Center Street
ADDRESS: 600 S. Center Street
BUILT: 1858
ARCHITECTURAL STYLE: Antebellum Vernacular I-House
This vernacular farm house was built just before the Civil War as a summer residence. The Italianate renovations such as the roof brackets and the bay window were added in the 1870s as was the northern addition with a gable facing the street.
Charlotte Stebbins was sole owner of the home when she and her husband Charles moved to Ashland permanently about 1861. They raised their nine children here on what was originally a seven-acre farm. Stebbins Street borders the property on the north.
Their son Charles married Rebekah Macmurdo, one of C.W. Macmurdo’s daughters, in 1887. They lived in this home with their three sons. Stebbins established a hardware store at the corner of Thompson Street and Railroad Avenue.
The store was known for its wide-ranging inventory and as a gathering spot for Ashland men to discuss the hot topics of the time. It wasn’t long before folks named the corner “Stebbins Corner.” When farmers came to town to shop, they tied their horses in Stebbins’ tie-lot, a fenced-in area outside the store.
When telephone service came to Ashland in 1903, Julia Weisinger, one of Charlotte and Charles Stebbins’ granddaughters was the first manager. She retired in 1938, when C&P Telephone installed a new automatic dialing system.
This home was nearly demolished in the 1970s when the Longmires purchased it. They spent nearly two years renovating it to suit modern-day living without destroying the historic integrity of its architecture.