Home near Hazel Green, Alabama, has airplane hangar, four-story silo

Home with a hangar built around a silo owned by Joyce & Peter Pryor. 

HAZEL GREEN, Alabama - Being 250 feet from a runway wouldn’t be a typical selling point, but that’s exactly why Peter and Joyce Pryor bought their house near Hazel Green. Peter was reading The Huntsville Times one Sunday morning last spring when he saw a classified ad for the house, which came with its own hangar and access to the runway that is the Hazel Green Airport. The couple has flown for years and currently owns a two-seater CTLS Light Sport airplane.

Joyce had just walked in with her cup of coffee when Peter asked her “’Do you want to decorate a new house,’” she said, remembering that conversation. “I said, ‘why, are you leaving me’?”

Peter made a call and arranged to meet the real estate agent down the country road that leads to the house early that afternoon. That’s when the couple discovered they didn’t just have a hangar to consider, but a house that ended up being one pretty cool space.

The house, it turned out, was built around a silo the original owner’s father had built many years ago in the Midwest. He had the large, cast-concrete blocks that made up the silo disassembled and shipped to Alabama. He then reconstructed the silo, adding Sheetrock and windows to create spacious, sunny, round rooms.

“He must have really loved his father,” Joyce said, to be willing to move the massive blocks that made up the silo to their current Madison County site.

To build the silo, the slabs of concrete, or staves, are stacked together and then bound by steel rods, Peter Pryor said of the construction technique. Think about how a barrel is built, for instance.

“If you look up concrete stave silo on the internet, you’ll see ,” he said.

While the silo is four stories tall, the original owner, Billy Bernard, added a two-story addition that includes a kitchen, a large family room, and a bedroom. That addition is typical two-by-four construction with right-angled rooms.

It’s the silo that makes it cool, Joyce said. “I had never been in a house with round rooms, or at least that many round rooms.”

The Pryors don’t live in the house at the airport. They already have a beautiful home on Green Mountain in South Huntsville. They have spent the night there and have used it as a guest house. Joyce has also brought her bridge group out for lunch and a few rounds of cards.

The couple is looking forward to Joyce’s sister, Tina, moving in soon. She’s selling her house in Florida and has already brought up a lot of her things in preparation for the move. She plans to use one of the silo rooms for her master bedroom and another for her office. The bottom floor of the silo is the dining room, which Joyce has furnished with a round table and other antiques.

On a nice day, the top floor of the silo would be the place to be, if you don’t mind climbing the steep, spiral staircase that leads to the room full of windows that look out on the trees that surround the house. On any day, though, the house is situated on a quiet lot near farmland and down the road from other homes with their own hangars.

“Almost everybody who lives along here are pilots,” Joyce said. “They have get-togethers once a month and do a pot-luck.”

“Cool Spaces” is a weekly feature looking at interesting rooms in Huntsville-area homes. Do you have a suggestion for a cool space? Email Pat Ammons at pammons@al.com.

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