Built in 1868–1870 in the vicinity of Cumberland Furnace, the three-story house was a summer residence for Nashville socialite Mary Florence Kirkman and her husband Captain James Pierre Drouillard.

Bell "quickly turned Cumberland Furnace into a money-maker" and was able to sell it in 1825, together with the surrounding acres, for thrice the amount of money he had paid for it to Anthony Wayne Van Leer.

[3][4] One of their cabins in Pennsylvania were used as a station for the Underground Railroad[5][6] Most Tennessee businesses had enslaved labor, despite this, all Anthony's workforce were paid fair salaries for the time.

Mary Florence Drouillard had their house designed after one she had seen in Newport, Rhode Island, a resort town for East Coast elite where she spent summers as a young woman while at school in New York.

[9] During the period when they lived at Cumberland Furnace, the Drouillards donated money to build a church for the community and a parish school to serve both white and black children.

[9] Completed in 1870, the Italianate style house is clapboard siding over frame, with a 10-foot deep veranda porch over 100 feet in length skirting the north facade.