Villa DeWolf Bed and Breakfast is welcoming fall with the opening of the last room in the Ayers Mansion still in need of renovation.
A fall open house at the mansion featuring 30-minute guided tours will be from noon to 4 p.m. Nov. 5, according to owner Scotty DeWolf.
“The main emphasis for this is that we just completed a major restoration of the last room, the three-room owner’s suite, which includes a Southern-style sleeping porch,” DeWolf said.
Sleeping porches, similar to balconies, were used during the summer in the days before air conditioning. The second-story porches often were built with air flow in mind, to capture what cool breeze might be available, and were screened to keep bugs from feasting while people dozed.
“When people first saw (the Ayers sleeping porch), it was junky and had old, weathered pine that goes back to 1857,” DeWolf said of its state before renovation work on the stately home began. “We totally restored everything.”
The original owner’s bedroom and sitting room combine with the sleeping porch to create a three-room suite featuring the original claw-foot soaking tub in the bathroom.
The suite also includes a bedframe dating to the 1850s.
“It’s period-correct to the house and it’s gorgeous,” DeWolf said. “Beautiful, carved walnut.”
Along with offering visitors a glimpse of the new suite, the tours will focus on the history of the Ayers Mansion and the family that first lived there.
“I’m a history nut and living in the house is like living in a history book,” DeWolf said.
The tour also will include some Ayers family history, with emphasis on matriarch Eliza Ayers, DeWolf said.
“She was the queen of girl power in the 19th century, when it wasn’t cool,” he said, noting she founded a girls’ school to ensure her daughters received an education and also was integral in establishing what now is Jacksonville Memorial Hospital.
For more information, go online to VillaDeWolf.com or DeWolfHouse on Facebook.
