No doubt it was the biggest bauble in Marylene Griffin's collection.

The brown stone "castle" reportedly built by a silent-movie starlet in the 1930s that sits behind a KFC restaurant on what is now the heavily commercial Gate City Boulevard, belonged to her. Husband, businessman and demolition expert David Griffin Sr., who died in 2024, is said to have bought the house as a surprise for his wife, who had grown up a few doors down.

A photo someone snapped from that era on a snowy day was said to have looked like a Thomas Kinkade painting. It has been modified over the years for usage.

"The house was beautiful," Griffin told the News & Record in 2006 while explaining that the lawn — now mostly a parking lot — extended to the highway. The grounds had two big goldfish ponds. Griffin, who d

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