Ret. Col. Bob Spiller explains the history of the Riverview at Hobson Grove on Wednesday afternoon. This historic museum is looking for a new director. Photo by Clinton Lewis

When George Anna McKenzie was a child, the Italiante Victorian house known as Riverview was her playground and her grandparents home. McKenzie and her friends would climb the stairs in the houses cupola and look out over land that Confederate soldiers once held. They would slide down staircase railings in the home that her great-grandfather, Atwood Hobson, had begun building in 1857 and saved from Confederate destruction by offering it as a place where the Southern army could store artillery when Bowling Green was known as Kentuckys Confederate capitol. Riverview was far from a museum, as it is now. For a child, it simply was a wonderfully fun home albeit a home with beautifully hand-painted ceilings and a parlor in which McKenzies grandparents still greeted guests. I went there for the first time when I was not quite 4, McKenzie said Wednesday. We had no electricity and no indoor plumbing and no central heat, so it was a step back in time for a child who lived in a regular apartment in Nashville (Tenn.). While Riverview at Hobson Grove has long since been upgraded with electricity and other modern conveniences that make it possible for visitors to enjoy tours there, McKenzie, who now lives in Bowling Green, still is enchanted by the property. In the summer, its really beautiful, she said. And at Christmas and when a Riverview tea committee sets tables in the house with fine linens and silver for specially arranged luncheons, she said. I feel that its a very important landmark for the city, the county and the state, and its an opportunity to educate the schoolchildren and keep a part of past in our present, McKenzie said. Riverview is the only house museum in Bowling Green. It lost the status of being a private residence for Hobson family members in 1952.That was when McKenzies grandfather George Hobson turned the house over to his only daughter, George Anna Duncan McKenzies mother because he had to move into a nursing home, Riverview volunteer docent Bob Spiller said. Also around that time, someone set a bomb off on one side of the house. That told (George Hobson) it was time to get out, Spiller said. Duncan sold the house to a Franklin man who wanted to give it to his niece as a wedding gift. Though the new owner renovated the house, his niece didnt want the property and Riverview again was sold, Spiller said. Through the years, several tenants rented the house. But they didnt just live there. In addition to farming the land, they modernized the home and took most of the original indoor shutters off the windows to use for firewood. The house that was once immaculately run by a family, a butler, a housekeeper, a gardener and others fell into a state of near disrepair. The city of Bowling Green bought it and the land surrounding it in 1965 for $1.Theyd bought it for a golf course, Spiller said. They were going to tear it down. But Jane Morningstar, a Bowling Green resident who since has died, heard of the plan and developed her own plan to save the old house. My mother-in-law met with a group of ladies in the ladies room of the Bowling Green Country Club, Spiller said of Morningstar as he gave a tour of Riverview on Wednesday. They got the state and federal funds to restore it. McKenzie was thrilled that the home would be spared and restored to the glory that her grandparents and mother had known. Otherwise, it would have continued to be in disrepair and would have deteriorated to the point that it would have been impossible to do anything with it, she said. These days McKenzie also volunteers at Riverview, where visitors can take a nearly hour-long tour that includes detailed descriptions of furniture, photos and paintings that were original to the house. McKenzie can speak with personal experience about antiques such as the piano she used to play as a child. While most of the homes furnishings arent original to the house, they are antiques from periods including Rococo Revival, French and Empire. The collection also includes vintage clothes, antique jewelry made from hair that women saved from their brushes and a coal stove that was original to the home. Most of the items in the collection have been donated by Warren Countians, Spiller said. As Riverviews collection continues to grow, the board of directors for the house, which is kept up by the city, is looking for a new director for the museum, Interim Director Levi Word said. Word, a retired Bowling Green police officer, took the job in January, after director Lindsay Bland left to take a job in environmental consulting. The board also is looking for volunteer docents and shopkeepers anxious to share Riverviews history. McKenzie said she finds volunteering at the house to be rewarding. I feel like we really do a service, she said. Riverview at Hobson Grove is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays from February to late December and from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Sundays. Admission is $3.50 for adults, $1.50 for students and free for children under age 6. There is a family rate of $6 a family, which includes a parent or parents with school-age children. Warren County school groups may tour the home free. Group rates are available for groups of 20 or more.