A northwest Lawrence landmark went up in flames Friday afternoon.

The big, red barn, which had been converted into a home, had been sitting on the hill overlooking the Kansas River valley northwest of Lawrence since before the Kansas Turnpike was built. Friday, billowing black smoke was visible from four miles away after the barn caught fire.

The scene was enough to make Casey Carlsten, 19, and Barbie Wolford, 22, cry; the two had grown up in the converted barn.

“It was pretty emotional for me and my sister,” Carlsten said. “I was looking at my bedroom and thinking to myself, I don’t think my walls are purple anymore.”

Firefighters from three stations were called about 1 p.m. to the fire at Eagle Pass and Tillerman drives. Fifty percent of the barn, which had been built in the 1920s, already was gone when they arrived.

“It was going pretty good when we got the alarm,” said Maj. Rich Barr, of Lawrence-Douglas County Fire & Medical.

Fire & Medical officials suspect the blaze started from an electrical cord from an outside power source, sending the kitchen, front porch and dining room up in flames. The roof collapsed, and the building eventually was demolished to safely extinguish the fire.

The house had been vacant and was owned by the real estate company North Stephens Partnership, but it had a long history for the Tuckell family who used to own it.

A vacant home formerly owned by Roger Tuckell, of Maple Hill, burns to the ground near Kasold Drive and Peterson Road. Lawrence firefighters spent two hours Friday dousing the flaming structure with water.

Carlsten and Wolford’s father, Roger Tuckell, had farmed the 80 acres of land since he was a boy. Soon after marrying, he and his wife, Betty, started renovating the building from a barn with a one-bedroom apartment into a five-bedroom, three-bathroom, 6,500-square-foot home that was like no other in Lawrence.

There was the 30-foot Christmas tree they brought in every holiday season for an annual Christmas party. And there was the full-size trampoline in the unfinished back room. Carlsten said she especially remembered the echoing, booming sound the ceiling made when it rained because the building was so big.

The family moved away to Maple Hill four years ago. Faced with encroaching suburban sprawl, the family decided keeping the $100,000 barn wasn’t worth being surrounded by a generic-looking housing development, Tuckell said.

“You can’t stop progress,” he said.

Now, much of the onetime 80-acre hilltop home-site itself is being converted into a neighborhood with dozens of new residences.

6News video: Countryside home fire visible for miles

From behind his desk at Lawrence Feed and Farm Supply, 545 Wis., Tuckell spent the afternoon answering phone call after phone call from people letting him know that his labor of love was going up in flames. First it was a co-worker, then police officers, followed by many other friends.

All the Tuckell family has left of the house now are three shoe boxes of old photos and some oil paintings done by a Lawrence artist in the 1970s.

“We really feel bad,” Tuckell said. “Lawrence lost a tremendously historic landmark. Everyone knew what that place was; drive to the end of Kasold and there it was. It really just is too bad.”

Barbie Wolford, of Maple Hill, talks to a friend on her cell phone as her former childhood home goes up in flames.