History
& Restoration
About the owners
and the mansion's award winning restoration
"George and Charlien McGlothin are
truly dedicated preservationists.
The Clay Faulkner home is the third old house they've restored.
This time, it took them 4-1/2 years."
--
"The Best Restorations in America," Bob Vila's American Home Magazine
In the 1940s, Clay Faulkner's
mansion was converted into a hospital and nursing home. An early ad
boasted a quiet location and an ideal climate, at rates of $5.00 to
8.00 per day -- according to care required. By the mid-1950's, Dr. J.P.
Dietrich had added onto the building and renamed it the Faulkner
Springs Hospital. Local folks still tell fond stories about the doctor
and the house where he dispensed medicine and love.
The doctor closed the hospital
in 1968. He stripped out much of the woodwork in an unsuccessful
attempt to tear down the solid brick structure, then let it sit empty
for a decade an a half. When George McGlothin bought the old house at
auction in 1989, it was a ghost of its former glory. George and his
wife Charlien began four years of restoration, tackling 95 percent of
the work themselves. The results were well worth the effort. Today,
Falcon Rest is more beautiful than the day Clay Faulkner's
family moved in.
In 1997, the National Trust
for Historic Preservation honored Falcon Rest's rebirth as first prize
winner of their Great American Home
Award for outstanding home restoration.
George left a career in
management to come back to his home town of McMinnville and restore
Falcon Rest. As schoolchildren who came for a tour reported
in the local paper, "Mr. McGlothin loves his house." He can tell
stories about it at a mile a minute. That's probably why Middle
Tennessee's Sunday magazine described him as "a walking
encyclopedia dressed in a tuxedo." In addition to leading tours for
groups in his persona as "The Victorian Gentleman," George's favorite
pastimes are restoring old houses, buying for his Victorian Gift Shop,
and rooting for the New Orleans Saints football team (he's been loyal
to a
fault -- but it's finally paying off!).
Charlien took weekends and
holidays off from her job as a NASA public affairs writer to help with the
restoration. Since 1995, she's devoted full time to serving as Falcon
Rest's general manager and master chef, and using her PR
experience to get the word out about Falcon Rest -- including
developing this web site. Her South Louisiana heritage is reflected in
their mouth-watering menu specialties.