This historic Conway home turned bed and breakfast is for sale. Here’s a peek inside
Janel and David Ralph have spent the last three years caring for a nearly 100-year-old piece of Conway’s history.
Now they are ready to turn it over to someone else to preserve its legacy.
The Ralphs purchased the H.W. Ambrose home, located at 1503 Elm Street, in 2020, turning it into a bed and breakfast called The Inn on Elm.
The home, built from 1924 to 1926, is known as the “home that built Conway.” It was one of the first homes at that time to have electricity and running water, which allowed other homes that were built around it to have access to the utilities, Ralph said.
The 7,625-square-foot home is listed for $1.9 million and comes completely furnished. It sits on a little more than 2 acres and boasts seven bedrooms, five bathrooms, a great room, living room, formal study, solarium, butlers pantry, eight fireplaces and a large third floor space that was once rented by the city as a schoolhouse for Conway, Ralph said.
There is also a carriage house with a garage, a pool and two outside sitting areas.
It took the Ralphs a little more than a year to restore the home, doing most of the work themselves.
“It’s been a challenge,” Janel Ralph said about the restoration.
In addition to the bed and breakfast, Ralph also operates the property as an Airbnb, which can be rented in its entirety for 16 or more people at $1,800 a night.
As the owner of a supplement company, RE Botanicals, it has been difficult to give full attention to the bed and breakfast, Ralph said. It is because of this, and the fact that their children are now grown, that the Ralphs have decided to sell.
Historic place home to well-known Conway families
The house was built by Henry Ambrose, who served as general manager for the Conway Lumber Co. from 1906 until his death in 1937, for his wife, Maude Law Ambrose.
Maude nicknamed the house Dunmeade. It’s not clear why she nicknamed it that, but two theories say it was named after her grandmother or a relative who died in the war, Ralph said.
The home was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986.
Many of the previous owners were doctors – four in fact – and well-known families in Conway. Ralph said some of those family members had come by to see what had been done to the home.
That included not only upgrading the decor, paint and furnishings in every room, but redoing the hardwood floors, electricity and plumbing, restoring all the fireplaces to working order and stripping layers of wallpaper from several years.
Now the couple are renovating the carriage house into a living space so they can use the home solely for rental purposes.
It’s not the first house project that the couple have tackled, but it has been the most challenging, Ralph said.
But even with all the renovation frustrations, it is difficult for Ralph to let the house go.
“I’m still attached to it,” she said. “My mind was made up when I pulled in the driveway” about buying the home.
This story was originally published December 27, 2023 at 5:00 AM.
