CAMBRIDGE CITY — Experienced preservationists and organic farmers Tyler and Gentry Gough have purchased Cambridge City’s historic Huddleston Farmhouse and 18 acres from Indiana Landmarks.
The Goughs, who have restored a 1902 shingle-style house in Greenfield and a 1928 Dutch Colonial house in Indianapolis’s Irvington neighborhood, are deeply involved in Indy Urban Acres, an eight-acre organic urban farm that supplies low-income Hoosiers with healthy fruits and vegetables. Tyler is Indy Urban Acres’ director, and Gentry is a farmer.
With initial plans to live in Huddleston Farmhouse and use the land as a private family farm to grow crops and raise animals, the Goughs will eventually employ the property as an educational site to teach historic methods of planting, cooking and preservation.
“Our goal is to provide a place of beauty, integrity, stability and knowledge to the community for generations to come,” said Gentry Gough. “We’ll provide fruit, vegetables, herbs, nuts, grains, heritage meat, syrup and more.”
Built in eastern Indiana in 1841, the 14-room farmhouse originally provided a home for the 13 members of the Huddleston family and functioned as an inn for weary National Road travelers. Huddleston family members sold the home in the 1930s, and it served a number of uses before Indiana Landmarks acquired the property in 1974 and invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in a multi-year restoration of the house and accompanying barn, carriage shed, smokehouse, and springhouse. The organization will invest sale proceeds into other threatened historic buildings.
The Huddleston Farmhouse was sold with Indiana Landmarks’ protective covenants safeguarding its architectural character. Previously, Indiana Landmarks used Huddleston Farmhouse as its Eastern Regional Office. The organization plans to relocate that office to the Reid Center (formerly the Reid Memorial Presbyterian Church) in Richmond.
