From the Lawrence Daily Journal-World for June 21, 1989:

Lawrence city commissioners had voted to authorize the city manager to sign a guarantee agreement with the National Trust for Historic Preservation for a $70,000 loan to help renovate a historic home in the Oread neighborhood. The National Trust was loaning the money to the Lawrence Preservation Alliance to help pay for a $273,000 project to restore and build additional cottages at the “Benedict House,” 923 Tennessee. Commissioners who voted in favor of the guarantee hailed it as another step in the city’s commitment to historic preservation, but Commissioner David Penny, who had cast the lone dissenting vote, said the project was a poor example for historic preservation as well as a risky endeavor. “I think this particular house is a poor case to use for preservation. Structurally, this house is a disaster,” Penny said. “I don’t see it either in the purest form or in financial form as the type of thing we want to push for preservation.” The house, begun in 1869 or 1870, had been successfully nominated to the State Register of Historic Places. Now in disrepair, it had been purchased by the LPA in 1987 in an effort to prevent its demolition.