Ohio Valley Art League's kitchen tour includes North Main Street home in Henderson

HENDERSON, Ky. Anyone who spends any time driving North Main Street in downtown Henderson no doubt has noticed the home tucked into the corner lot at Fifth Street.

With a well-tended rose garden and a gazebo, the home developed in phases over the years had a colorful history in the years before it finally became a family residence in the late 1940s. It holds a world of memories for the family of the late Raymond B. and Hattie Preston, who lived there for 55 years starting in 1953.

The home, now owned by Kent and Jennifer Preston, experienced a 13-month renovation before they moved in last November with their 4-year-old daughter, Sophia. It will be one of six on this year's Ohio Valley Art League's annual Kitchen Tour Saturday.

It took the ice storm of dramatic proportions in January 2009 to inspire Kent and Jennifer to make the move, however.

The ice falling over the region, knocked out electricity and shut down public services.

The house at 520 N. Main St. was sitting vacant while the Preston estate decided what to do with it, but it had electricity and other amenities during that natural disaster, which Kent discovered during a foray to town to check on business interests.

"I called Jennifer and said '520 has power,'" so they packed up baby Sophia and temporarily moved to town from their home on Tscharner Road.

Eventually they would gather about 20 other storm-stressed powerless visitors, including fellow church members who needed refuge. They had a ball sharing meals and watching a DVD of one of the United Way pantomime shows over and over.

"We realized then how much it felt like home," Jennifer said. "Sophia loved it here, so we knew we belonged here."

As sister Viki Brigham puts it in a memoir of 520 N. Main St., "in 2010, Kent took a gulp and asked to buy the house from the estate."

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Ohio Valley Art League's kitchen tour includes North Main Street home in Henderson