Many a prisoner has languished in the cells of the so-called Old, Old Jail in Franklin, Tennessee. You can still see some of their names etched into the walls. There was convicted murderer Betty Burge, the first woman in Tennessee sentenced to the electric chair. And there was notorious car thief Rabbit Veach. One of the inmates even inspired a song: Country music singer Johnny Seay penned “Willie’s Drunk and Nelly’s Dyin’” (released in 1970) about his neighbor Willie York, who served more than a decade in the jail for murdering a Franklin sheriff.

Eventually, the Old, Old Jail came to languish, too. It was built for a grand total of $25,000 in 1941 to replace the county’s existing jail. But after another jail was built across town in the 1970s, the Art Deco-style building was converted into a variety of county offices. Once the last tenants moved out in 2008, the city boarded the building up, and it was left vulnerable to the elements. It flooded in 2010. The roof had been leaking for years. The water inside would turn to ice in the cold winter months. Rust covered the metal surfaces, and mold grew throughout the space. It no longer had functioning electrical and plumbing systems.

“It was a building only a preservationist could love,” says Mary Pearce, executive director of the Heritage Foundation of Franklin and Williamson County.

Indeed, Pearce and her Heritage Foundation colleagues were able to see potential in the decrepit old jail. They saw beauty in the cut-stone foundation, thick concrete floors, and grand stairway, and they envisioned it as the Heritage Foundation’s first permanent home. (For years, the organization had operated out of the rear of the downtown Franklin post office.)

In 2013, the Heritage Foundation purchased the building from the city for $25,000, which was donated by FirstBank. For the next three years, Pearce and her colleagues worked on raising funds for the efforts. They received a huge boost from Franklin residents Calvin and Marilyn Lehew, who donated $1 million to the project.

With funding secured, they worked with Nashville-based architectural firm Street Dixson Rick and local contractors Rock City Construction to repair and restore the 75-year-old structure, adding all new systems and making it fully accessible. They created new office space throughout the building, as well several community meeting rooms, a kitchen, a coffee bar, and a gift shop and reception area on the ground level. They hung nearly 200 historic photographs of the city along the restored stairwell, from the collection of the Heritage Foundation’s historian, Rick Warwick.

“We tried to minimize anything and everything that we did to the building,” Pearce says. “We wanted everything like it was originally.”

That includes all the old graffiti, which the Heritage Foundation left untouched on the concrete and steel walls.

“People walk in the door and they just say, ‘Wow,’” Pearce says. “And of course, we’re over the moon about it. We’re so proud of how it turned out.”

The Heritage Foundation celebrated the jail’s grand opening on May 22. Now called “The Big House of Historic Preservation,” the old jail serves both as the Heritage Foundation’s headquarters, as well as a public resource for all things related to historic preservation.

Also in the works, Pearce says, is putting together a jail tour, where visitors can come learn about the building’s earliest days.

Says Pearce, “There are a lot of stories in here.”