Johnny Cash’s longtime lakeside home, a showcase where he wrote much of his famous music and entertained U.S. presidents, music royalty and visiting fans, was destroyed by fire on Tuesday.

Cash and his wife, June Carter Cash, lived in the 13,880-square-foot home from the late 1960s until their deaths in 2003.

“So many prominent things and prominent people in American history took place in that house – everyone from Billy Graham to Bob Dylan went into that house,” said singer Marty Stuart, who lives next door and was married to Cash’s daughter, Cindy, in the 1980s.

Stuart said the man who designed the house, Nashville builder Braxton Dixon, was “the closest thing this part of the country had to Frank Lloyd Wright.”

When Cash moved there, the road was a quiet country lane that skirts Old Hickory Lake. Kris Kristofferson, then an aspiring songwriter, once landed a helicopter on Cash’s lawn to pitch him a song. Roy Orbison was his next-door neighbor for a while.

The property was purchased by Barry Gibb, a former member of the Bee Gees, in January 2006. Gibb and his wife, Linda, had said they planned to restore the home on Old Hickory Lake and hoped to write songs there. They had not yet moved in to the home, which they bought for a reported $2.3 million (euro1.71 million).

Dixon built the three-story house in 1967 for his own family, but Cash fell in love with it. Dixon was reluctant to sell, but Cash kept after him.

The fire, in this suburb about 20 miles northeast of downtown Nashville, started around 1:40 p.m. Fire trucks arrived within five minutes, but the house was already engulfed in flames, Hendersonville Fire Chief Jamie Steele said.

Just a few hours later, there was almost nothing left except stone chimneys, CNN.com reports.

The cause is unknown, but it is said the flames spread quickly because construction workers had recently applied a flammable wood preservative to the exterior of the house. The preservative was also being applied inside the house.

No workers were injured, but one firefighter was slightly hurt while fighting the fire, Steele said.