In June 1916, Fuller and Ida Callaway opened their newly built home, Hills and Dales, with an elaborate party, belatedly celebrating the 25th anniversary of their April 28, 1891, wedding.

On Wednesday, on what would have been the couple’s 119th anniversary, the Fuller Callaway family home reopened following a painstaking, year-long restoration that revealed the second and third floors for the first time since the landmark Georgian Italian residence was opened for public tours in 2004.

The original owners “would have been proud to entertain you in the home brought back to life and true to tradition,” executive director Carleton Wood said.

Odessadale resident Mary Anne Rasmussen, an artist and avid gardener, was the first local visitor up the stairs.

“What great vistas!” she said, gazing out at historic Ferrell Gardens from a window in the second-floor bedroom last used by Alice Hand Callaway, wife of Fuller E. Callaway Jr.

Nicknamed the Jean Harlow room because it was decorated in the style of the 1930s movie star, the room was a favorite of guests attending an 11 a.m. ribbon-cutting ceremony, held off the East portico of the house, now operated as a landmark museum by the Callaway Foundation.

“What a glorious morning this is,” foundation president Speer Burdette said in welcoming about 150 guests gathered under cloudless blue skies.

The restoration, which included complete rewiring, overhauling the heating and cooling systems, and adding fire protection and detection devices, allows the house to “function with all the latest and greatest additions of 2010” while remaining faithful to its vintage 1916 appearance, Burdette said.

It was a labor of love for the entire staff, Burdette said, and its early stages were followed with special interest by Ida Callaway Hudson, daughter of Fuller and Alice Callaway, who grew up in the home and was, at the time of her death last year, the last person who had lived full time at Hills and Dales.

“It was important to her to see her family home restored,” Burdette said.

In his invocation, the Rev. Paul Baxter of First Baptist Church on the Square thanked God for the home as a “living legacy” of the Callaway family and its “American ingenuity, Christian generosity and civic responsibility.”

LaGrange-Troup County Chamber of Commerce president Page Estes echoed that theme, noting that the restoration was “not just about a big house, but about a family that lived here and gave back so much.”

Estes expects the expanded Hills and Dales tour to be a boost to local tourism.

“We know it will have a big impact. We already have lots of groups calling about it,” she said.

Following the cutting of the ribbon by Callaway Foundation trustees and employees, guests moved in small groups through the home, admiring newly restored artworks, antique furnishings and more than 100 rewired light fixtures, but also noting small personal touches - a sewing machine with vintage thread, set up in the spacious linen closet, flowers awaiting arrangement in what had been Alice Callaway’s “flower room,” an embroidered pillow with a message about grandmothers.

“It’s especially impressive that something so architecturally significant retains the feeling of family,” said LaGrange resident Susie Edwards.

That didn’t happen by accident, said the Callaway Foundation’s Rick Waterhouse. In every decision, from start to finish, the guiding principle was “never forgetting to have respect for the home and those who came before. This was about carrying on a legacy.”

Wood, credited with managing the project with extraordinary dedication and skill, said that for weeks leading up to the ribbon-cutting he’d repeatedly been asked the same question - “When are you going to finish?” - and always had given the same answer: “Soon. Soon.”

“But I finally realized that you never really finish a historic restoration,” he said. “You celebrate milestones of accomplishment.”

Wednesday was a day for celebrating milestones.