Lewis Gaston - 49 Miami Ave

This house was built by Lewis Gaston (L. G.) Anderson after he purchased his 156 acre farm from James Chamberlain in 1857. The house was built in the Italian Villa style sometime between that year and 1867, because that year’s plat of Warren County shows the house in place. Anderson farmed most of his acreage until 1887, when he sold it off for development.

Characteristic of this style, the house is asymmetrical, with five gables. Of the house’s original design features, the many tall pedimented windows and shutters, and wide wooden molding and cornice, remain. When built, there was also a campanile, or bell tower, where the cupola is today. This tower had a convex Mansard roof, characteristic of French Second Empire houses, and rose almost 50 feet to the top of the tower’s metal cresting. The tower and large corbels that decorated the wooden molding under the eaves were torn off in the mid-1940s by a later owner. The house also originally had four flat porches. The one on the east was an especially ornate arcade with double columns and heavy carved frieze, somewhat similar to the ones still at 209 and 309 Oxford Road. The original porches were all removed by the early 1920s. The house was also originally parged, that is, lightly plastered and painted a then very popular Venetian Red to protect the bricks from the elements. The house’s bricks were almost certainly made from clay excavated nearby and baked in a kiln set up on the property. All woodwork and stones were cut on site. Most of the shutters are original and no two are alike. The six large evergreens along the path in the front yard were planted by Anderson soon after he moved in. When the house was built, the only road was what is today’s Miami Avenue. The path from the east front of the house to the road is made of stones said to have been ship’s ballast. Photos of the house taken about 1900 show it surrounded by a white picket fence.

In 1873 Anderson had established a grain and lumber business in Franklin and this lasted until 1965. Anderson served as Warren County commissioner, spearheading the construction of Franklin’s famous suspension bridge in 1873. Anderson also served one term in the Ohio senate. Anderson’s two youngest children, Howard and William, were born in this house. They later built their own houses

located at 302 Lake and 225 Oxford Road. Two other Anderson children, Derrick and Mary, built the homes that still stand at 103 Miami Avenue and 108-110 Elm Street. Over the years when L. G. Anderson lived here, many family occasions, such as wedding receptions and parties, were celebrated in this house. The 1870 and 1880 census show the Andersons had a female live-in servant. In 1880, the house had a boarder who worked at a paper mill. When Anderson died in 1889, his funeral was held in his parlor. During the March 1913 Flood, the home’s residents, Anderson’s youngest son and his family, fled upstairs and ate off a chafing dish until the water subsided. The Andersons sold the house in 1921 to S. C Alexander, who owned the house until 1946. S. C. Alexander was a former traveling salesman from North Carolina who owned several retail businesses in downtown Franklin. During the last year’s of his ownership, the house was divided into apartments. The current front porch and tower dates from the 1970s.