Arts Council of the Twin Counties (Galax Library)

Between the new library and the Jeff Matthews Memorial Museum, the Arts Council site includes a fine collection of buildings, some that are original to the property and others that have been moved and reconstructed here for educational purposes. Although the placement of these buildings is artificial, they do illustrate early building types. The B. C. Vaughn House (1910s), built for one of the Vaughn Furniture Company families and now the Arts Center, is a large, brick, hipped-roof, foursquare house with Queen Anne and Craftsman stylistic overtones. It houses the children's library collection. Behind the house, two connected log buildings (the Austin houses), moved from their original locations, illustrate the housing types of the area's early settlers. They are single-room houses of hewn logs joined with half-dovetail notching, with wood shingle roofs, braced-board doors, small multipane sash windows, and massive exterior-end stone chimneys. Adjoining the log houses is the Jim Craig/Phipps Bourne Blacksmith Shop of similar construction and with a sheltered outdoor work porch. A final structure of note on the grounds is the “court-house birdhouse” (c. 1990, Glenn Plath), built as a raffle item to help raise funds for the preservation of the former Grayson County Court-house in Independence, which it depicts in miniature, complete with corner turrets and conical roofs.