The Holliday-Dorsey-Fife House can be a central tool in telling Fayetteville's history, restoration consultant Tommy Hart Jones told the city's Main Street Board of Directors Tuesday.

"In the history of that house, you can talk about the entire history of Fayetteville," said Jones, who teaches classes on restoration at Georgia State University and has worked on such well-known projects as Atlanta's Margaret Mitchell House and Smyrna's Aunt Fannie's Cabin.

The city recently purchased the historic house, which was home to relatives of famed gunman Doc Holliday, and the Main Street board is working with the volunteer Holliday House Association and other interested parties to begin the process of restoring the house for use as a museum and tourist attraction.

Situated on Stonewall Avenue just west of the Courthouse Square, the antebellum Greek revival home is ideally suited to that purpose, Jones told the group.

"There's a lot of potential there," he said. "You can use it as a tool to teach about the history of the city and Fayette County as a whole."

The first step, he said, is for the city and interested volunteers to come up with a mission statement for the house, something the association the Main Street officials will discuss in a meeting Dec. 16, said Sherri Anderson, Main Street director.

"What is the city's mission for that site?" he said, adding that he believes that mission should focus on the home's usefulness as a museum.

In fact, he said, the city should treat it as a museum artifact, "although it's one too big for a glass case."

But the principle is the same, he said. Through their architecture and the influential residents who have lived there, houses like the Holliday House can tell far more than traditional research can, he said. "If you know how to read them, they're a book waiting to be read. There's a big difference between just reading about [history] and actually walking in the spaces that they used."

Jones, who has worked with the Holliday House Association to research the history of the house off and on for two years, presented a detailed master plan for its preservation and restoration.

As a consultant, he can continue to work with the city periodically to give advice on the ongoing process, but much of the work of restoration will have to be done by specialists, he added.

How long will it be before the process if completed?" one board member wanted to know. "Never," Jones replied. The process is ongoing, and part of restoring a historical treasure like the Holliday House is maintaining it for future generations, he said.

Even the historical research is never-ending, Jones said. More needs to be known about the home's former occupants through traditional research, and more detailed study of the structure of the house itself can reveal hidden knowledge, he said.

He urged the group to consider having archaeological digs conducted around the house when funding permits.

Also, by studying the layers of paint on surfaces in the house, experts can tell when certain improvements were made and gain other insight, Jones said.

Study of the house should focus on John Styles Holliday, who bought the house and several acres in the 1840s and gave it the Greek revival architecture that distinguishes it today, said Jones. But work also should focus on the original owner of the land, Hezekiah McIntosh, and later owners Alexander Ware, Solomon Dorsey and Robert E. Lee Fife, he added.

Work should progress slowly, to avoid destroying significant details, but there's no reason the house can't be used as a museum starting immediately, said Jones. The work of studying and restoring the house will be as interesting to visitors as the house itself. It can serve as a museum showcasing medical history, period costume and the history of Fayette's business community, he suggested.