At 6:04 on the evening of 7 May 2025, Kobi Cummings called 911. Sparks had started from an electrical box in a back room of the Magnolia House, and the flames were already moving. Everyone was out of the building by the time she made the call.
The first engine arrived fifteen minutes later. Once the fire reached the attic it was too dangerous to go back inside, so it was fought from the outside, and crews were still on the property after one in the morning. Bystanders pulled hose early on, before the reinforcements came. Departments from across Dade County came, and then from beyond it — Chattanooga sent a ladder truck, Hamilton County an air truck and a rehab unit, because the tanks were running out and the people on the line had been there for hours.
About four hundred thousand gallons of water went onto the house that night. In the morning it was a shell.
What the house was
It was built in the 1890s and known for most of its life as the Frye House — the landmark on Pope Creek Road, the one people pulled over to photograph. Paul Cummings spent seven years restoring it before he handed the estate to his daughter to run.
He was out of state when it burned, and spent the night on the phone to fire departments. The morning after, he told the Dade County Sentinel what he had decided:
I could’ve torn it down, but I took seven years to painstakingly restore that house. I was so proud of it. People came from miles and miles away to take pictures of it.
He also said something worth repeating here, because it turned out to be the point: “We suffered a loss — not just me. The house was a focal point of Pope Creek Road.”
The columns
In those first days, with the insurance company on the phone and the site still smoking, the one hopeful note was structural: the columns on the front porch looked as though they might be saved.
They were. The columns at the front of the house today are the original columns, standing where they always stood. Window frames from the old house are back in the new one, and so is a wooden mantle. The front follows its own history as closely as the record allows. It is not a replica of a lost building; it is the same building, raised again on its own footprint.
Who paid for it
Insurance did not cover the cost of bringing it back. In May 2025 the family said so plainly and asked for help, and the community that had been photographing the house for decades put its hand in its pocket. Kobi wrote at the time that every dollar would go toward clearing the site and preserving what could be preserved, so that “one day soon, we can fling open those doors again and invite our community back inside.”
This is that day.
And what is new
Behind the house, where there was nothing before, there is now a conservatory: glass on three sides, Lookout Mountain on the fourth, a vaulted roof with crystal chandeliers under it. It is a room the old house never had. It is also the answer to the question every couple asks, because if it rains nothing is tented, nothing is struck, and nothing costs extra.
Outside it, a wide terrace with a round bar and lounge seating looks down the valley, and a brick-walled patio sits below that. Upstairs there is a room of its own, under its own chandelier.
The day itself
The rooms were styled in sage and ivory — tufted sofas, white chiavari chairs, potted magnolia trees, hydrangea with amaranthus hanging from it. A guitarist played, bites went round, and a sign at the door read, simply, Welcome to the Magnolia House at The Valley Venues.
Kobi spoke before the ribbon was cut.
It could not mean more to me, more to my family, that you guys are here today. This space has meant the world to us. We love bringing people together… and making beautiful spaces.
Thank you
To every department that fought it that night and the ones who covered the county while they did. To everyone who gave so that the rebuild could start. To everyone who came and stood in it with us. And to Barlow Film Co. for filming the day.
Walk through the house here, or download the wedding pamphlet.
Details of the fire are drawn from Lydia Berglar’s reporting in the Dade County Sentinel, 15 May 2025.
Come and see it for yourself.
The estate answers most of these questions better than a page can. Download the wedding pamphlet, or walk the property when it suits you.
Download the Wedding Pamphlet