By Abraham Rowe
In an effort to learn more about our communities from an insider perspective, the Muscle Shoals National Heritage Areas’s Hidden Spaces project asks folks from all across northwest Alabama to show us their hometowns. These tour guides will share details only a 
local would know — the lucky fishing holes, the best place to get a slaw dog, the historic house hidden behind an impassable thicket — and introduce us to the neighbors & stories that make our towns feel like home.
He is neither a licensed architect or a PH.D. historian but Wayne Kuykendall doesn’t let that stop his mission to preserve history in his hometown of Athens. A true preservationist & collector, he’ll tell you that “it’s a curse, liking this old stuff.”
As he talks about his commitment to historic preservation, he’ll mention his great aunt, born in 1866, who lived with his family while he grew up. Then he’ll tell you about going to his mother’s childhood home, which was built in 1802.
Both of those influences forged his love for history and old homes, he said.
A financial planner with some serious side hustle, Wayne has taken bits & pieces of dismantled & discarded historic places from all over the South and incorporated them into the places all around him: his home, his church and the homes he restored & built for his two daughters, as well as many other projects.
On the day I visited, the first place Wayne took me was a building on Athens’ historic courthouse square that houses an antique store. After exchanging pleasantries with the owners, he removed a picture from the wall. Behind that picture was a space used to write recipes, shopping lists & other scribbles in the kitchen of The Empress Cafe, the building’s tenant in the early/mid 1900s. Next we went to his wood shop just a few doors down, where he makes period furniture, vintage style moldings, mantles & and doors.
Moving along we went to his two daughters’ homes near the courthouse square. The houses are next door to each other. One is an
early 1800s Federal house with a modern addition. The other is new but built to look of the same era as the homes around it. In between, in the back yard, is housing for enslaved people.
We walk into the addition to admire the tall ceilings, an open floor plan & architectural antiques.
“This flooring is the floor that came out of The Murphy House the tornado tore up over in Decatur, heart pine,” he said.
Pieces of historic woodworking are in every room — mantles, spindles and wainscoting. If there was not enough to go around, Wayne replicated it in in his shop and seamlessly blended the old and new together.
“That’s the stairway that came out of Moorsville, it’s reversed. It was a stairway on the other side and when they put it up we had to reverse everything,” he said.
Next door is the new build with the front of the house modeled after a home on Eutis Street in downtown Huntsville. It’s full of vintage moldings and window transoms, with the limestone facade cut in the 1800s, Wayne’s daughter said that when people visit, many are surprised to learn it’s actually a new house.
Next Wayne took me to the square to show off a friend’s work that’s part of downtown Athens’ continuing renovation: a former cotton warehouse becoming Hi-Plane coffee shop/event space and an upstairs Airbnb hotel. The coffee shop has a 1929 Travel Air 4D 
biplane in the main room and is named in honor of Pryor Field, a WWII training center in nearby Decatur.
Last stop was Wayne’s home. On the way he pointed to the courthouse steps & said “Just remember that.”
The home was built in the 1840s & full of elements from all over the region. A crown jewel of Wayne’s historic finds is the steps from the former Limestone County courthouse, which had been in storage for years. He was inspired to incorporate them in the kitchen redesign when his wife wanted a bigger kitchen.
Other standouts in the house are the rope bed he sleeps on daily, the pastoral mural in the dining room, handwritten lists on the walls of the former pantry, journals of his ancestors & the imposing oversized portrait of Robert E Lee in the stairwell.
Everything in Wayne’s house is a piece of history and ultimately a piece of the man himself.
Wayne Kuykendall has chronicled the stories of his hometown in wood & stone and saved so many shining examples of true craftsmanship from all over the region, incorporating them into every element of his life. As a testament to his love of family, community & history, he has created a one-of-a-kind historical mosaic.
