It was a show-stopper the day Cedar Oaks “up and split.” To make way for the coming Downtowner Motel, in late 1963 Hassel Smith (pictured standing at bottom left) watches as his former home he gave to Oxford is carried away after being cut in two and loaded up on trucks. The house survived the Civil War‘s warring torches when locals stamped out the flames in the parlor as the Yankees galloped away up North Lamar. Thus, Cedar Oaks it is known to many as, “The house that would not die.”
