Go to the homepage for the Sylva Herald and Ruralite

Preserving homes could create historic walking district

By Rose Hooper
Shadowlawn Claude Allison built Shadowlawn, this large, two-story house on the corner of Savannah Drive and Cowee Street in Sylva, in the early 1920s for his new bride from Oregon. Jonnie Clasen would like to see the houses behind the Jackson County Courthouse preserved as an historic walking district. The Hooper House restoration and celebration of the county's sesquicentennial gave her the idea.

Clasen owns one of those homes, Shadowlawn, which is a large, two-story house built in the early 1920s. The home, located on the corner of Savannah Drive and Cowee Street, claims a rich historical heritage.

"But so do all the homes in the area," said Clasen. "Think what stories a docent could tell on a walking tour... even ghost stories. My house has its own unique ghost... some of the other houses may have their own, too."

Ghosts attract tourists - witness the popularity of haunted inns in England and castles in Scotland, Clasen pointed out, in addition to those right here in our country in cities like New Orleans, Key West, Fla., and Charleston, S.C.
Wedding Claude Allison of Sylva (top, right) met Florence Barrett (top, left) in Oregon when when she was just 9 years old. He waited until she turned 18 before they married. Nancy (bottom, right), the youngest of five children born to Claude and Florence Barrett Allison, celebrated her marriage to Boyd Sossamon with a reception in the parlor of Shadowlawn. The only surviving child of the Allison marriage is Frances Allison Whitt, who lives in Asheville with her husband, Bailey. Shadowlawn, she said, is a testimony to a love story that began almost 3,000 miles away in Oregon during the early part of the 20th century. The story begins shortly after Claude Allison left Sylva and headed west at the age 18 to work in the logging camps of Oregon. There he met a 9-year-old girl, Florence Barrett, who was the daughter of the couple managing the dining hall at the lumber camp and helped serve food to the loggers.

For years Allison rode to work on the little railroad car that took Florence to school.

"He waited for her to grow up," said Frances Allison Whitt, one of five children resulting from their eventual marriage. "So Daddy worked in Oregon until Momma turned 18 and then they married."

Allison built Shadowlawn for his Oregon bride. Completed in the early 1920s, the house today still has many of the little extras, like hardwood floors, cedar-lined closets, doors with beveled glass and windows everywhere.

The house was filled with sunshine and laughter of the five happy children who grew up there, said Whitt, the last surviving child, who now lives in Asheville with her husband, Bailey.

Granddaughter Claudia Hooper Worley also loved playing in the house, which she felt "always had a presence."

"After my grandmother died, I was about 18, I went outside around the back of the house where her bedroom was and just felt like someone was watching me. I looked up, and there was a figure in her bedroom window," said Worley, who

Wedding 2 Worley remembers her grandmother telling about the mysterious "column of fire." described the house at the time as deserted.

"Grandmother was in bed at night and heard one of her sons call out to her. As she got up, she encountered a column of fire at her bedroom door," Worley said.

"There was no heat and no fire from the column, which lasted about five minutes and then it disappeared. Grandmother looked all around and couldn't tell what had caused it. Turns out her sons were O.K. when she got to them."

Jayne Sossamon Gillett, another granddaughter, said she had read about angels sometimes taking shapes like the column of fire. Clasen feels that "angel-like" presence still resides at Shadowlawn.

The love story at Shadowlawn continued when the Allison's daughter Nancy married Boyd Sossamon. The couple had their wedding reception in the parlor.

Years later when they were living there, Boyd Sossamon recalled that "Sylva town manger Ed Nicholson told me that the wall in front of our house would interfere with the town's new sidewalk.

"I came home and the town crew had a bulldozer and said they were going to tear the wall down because it would be 2 inches narrower than it was in front of Roscoe Poteet's house. I told them they could tear it down, but they'd have to built it back the way it was.

"They said, 'We can't do that because it will cost too much money.' So I went in the house, got my shotgun and propped it up beside a chair I put in the yard and sat down. I said, 'I don't recommend that you tear my wall down unless you put it back the way it is. I didn't say I would shoot them, just that I didn't recommend they tear the wall down. They got the message."

"Now that's historic preservation at its best, don't you think?" said Clasen, who noted that many of the homes in the area behind the courthouse feature stones walls "probably built by the same person." "What better time than during our sesquicentennial to start preserving these homes?" Clasen asked. "Seeing the renovation at the Hooper House made me realize we should just push the renovation effort up the hill."

Back to Archive: 11/29/01.