Introduction to Historic Preservation in Athens-Clarke County, Georgia

Summaries of preservation initiatives and incentives at the national and state level introduce an abbreviated narrative of the local preservation movement, compiled from standard historic and preservation sources on Athens-Clarke County. Discussion of the potential benefits of preservation and existing incentives for preservation follows. Summary blocks provide concentrated information on the variety of organizations involved in preservation efforts, and a timeline of preservation activity appears on page 11.

Historic Preservation: United States

In 1906, the United States Congress passed the Antiquities Act, which enabled the designation of national monuments and provided protection to major archaeological sites. In 1916, the National Park Service was formed as a separate bureau in the U.S. Department of the Interior. The National Park Service administered the national park system, including the majority of the historic properties owned by the federal government. The Historic Sites Act, passed by Congress in 1935, authorized the Department of the Interior to initiate a survey and identify historic sites throughout the country, encompassing properties not publicly owned. Recognizing the need to encourage public participation in the preservation process, Congress chartered the National Trust for Historic Preservation in 1949. As a nonprofit, quasi-public organization, the National Trust created a new climate of national support for state and local preservation efforts.

In 1966, Congress enacted the National Historic Preservation Act to authorize a federal-state partnership for the protection of historic resources. As part of this legislation, the survey program begun in 1935 under the auspices of the Historic Sites Act became the basis of the National Register of Historic Places. Because existing tax incentives favored new construction, and thus, encouraged the demolition of existing buildings, Congress subsequently passed the Tax Reform Act of 1976, offering the first major preservation tax incentive system. As interest in historic preservation increased, gradual involvement became evident on every level: federal, state, and local. In 1980, Congress amended the National Historic Preservation Act to include the Certified Local Government program, which incorporated local governments into the federal-state partnership. The Economic Recovery Act of 1981, subsequently replaced by the Tax Reform Act of 1986, further encouraged the rehabilitation and use of historic properties by providing significant investment tax credits.

Historic Preservation: Georgia

The Georgia General Assembly created the Department of Archives and History in 1918 to collect and preserve artifacts, and in 1951, established the Georgia Historical Commission, which initially erected historical markers and acquired, protected, and interpreted historic sites. The Georgia Conservancy, established in 1967 to protect Georgia's environment, created a Historic Sites Committee and jointly sponsored the first statewide preservation conference, held in Athens in 1969. As an effort to foster cooperation between all preservation-oriented entities, these conferences led to the establishment of the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation, incorporated in 1973. Established by a 1972 executive order, sanctioned by a 1975 legislative act, and funded until 1979, the Georgia Heritage Trust preserved Georgia's resources through direct purchase or acquisition of lesser property interests.

Because of the intense preservation concern and activity, the General Assembly enacted several pieces of legislation: the Georgia Antiquities Act of 1969, the Georgia Heritage Trust Act of 1975, and the Facade and Conservation Easement Act of 1976. Although the Georgia Historic Preservation Enabling Act and a bill revising the State Constitution were also considered during the bicentennial year, the Georgia Historic Preservation Act was not passed until 1980, when its adoption established minimum standards for local jurisdiction protection of historic resources and provided for the establishment of local historic preservation commissions. In 1989, the Georgia Planning Act required municipal and county governments to generate comprehensive plans which included a historic resource component. During its 1989 session, the General Assembly also passed a statewide property tax deferment program for rehabilitated historic property. A second tax abatement program was created on April 11, 1990 when the Governor signed into law a local option for property tax deferment for properties listed on the Georgia Register and locally designated. Additionally, the tax abatement provisions for transitional residential property, afforded by the legislation commonly known as the 1991 Timber Tax bill, is often beneficial to historic resources. In 1992, the Georgia Uniform Conservation Easement Act replaced the 1976 Facade and Conservation Easement Act.

Historic Preservation: Athens-Clarke County

A century after its inception Athens began to preserve her historic resources. Beginning in 1908, the University of Georgia restored its first building, Old College, which was built in 1801 and originally named Franklin College in honor of Benjamin Franklin. In 1919, the Athens Women's Club acquired and occupied the Joseph Henry Lumpkin House on Prince Avenue, and in 1939, the City of Athens purchased the Lyndon House for future use. These public and private initiatives, including institutional, organizational, and governmental actions, were the earliest evidence of preservation measures in Athens.

Raising Awareness: 1950-1970

During the late 1950s, the emergence of two organizations raised awareness regarding Athens' distinctive and rich historic character. Although a predecessor with the same name had formed in 1899 and lasted only one year, the existing Athens Historical Society (AHS) organized in the Tinsley-Stern House on October 12, 1959. Professor John Talmadge served as the first president of the organization, which purposes included the preservation and perpetuation of historic sites and places.

This private, non-profit organization initiated quarterly meetings, collected historic materials, promoted historical research and preservation efforts, and hosted joint seminars and tours.

On October 14, 1959, the Society for the Preservation of Old Athens (SPOA) became the second preservation organization in Athens, and Thomas Whitehead served as its first president. The organization's purpose was to cultivate and encourage interest in the preservation of buildings, homes, sites, and structures.

During its formative years, SPOA actively advocated the preservation of the Taylor-Grady House and the Lucy Cobb Institute. When a movement by commercial interests to purchase and demolish Milledge Avenue's traditional homes became evident, SPOA led efforts to obtain protective zoning provisions for Milledge Avenue. Although the organization sought to retain the existing residential zoning, Milledge Avenue from Broad Street to Five Points was rezoned; however, the new zoning was office-institutional rather than business. As a direct result, Milledge Avenue did not succumb to the rampant commercialization which consumed Prince Avenue.

Athens-Clarke County Historic Preservation Commission

Athens-Clarke County's adoption of the 1986 Historic Preservation Ordinance led to the establishment of the Historic Preservation Commission (HPC) in 1987. Appointed by the CEO and Commission, this seven-member commission protects historic properties through several measures, including: initiating historic resource surveys and preservation planning studies, recommending local designation of landmarks and districts, reviewing exterior changes to designated properties, and promoting the acquisition of easements and historic resources. Additionally, HPC sponsors public awareness and educational conferences, seeks grants for preservation projects, and serves as a community advocate. HPC also publishes helpful Design Guidelines, pamphlets for property owners within local historic districts, and the Welcome to Athens videocassette. As the official agency of the local government's historic preservation program, HPC addresses various issues such as reviewing design alternatives for handicap access to the Taylor-Grady House, assisting community efforts to prevent demolition of the Wray-Nicholson House, aiding with planning efforts to develop the Historic Resources Element of the Athens-Clarke County -Winterville Comprehensive Plan, and recommending the passage of the Local Option Tax Incentive for Historic Preservation.

Tom Reynolds, Chair

Historic Preservation Commission

120 Dougherty Street

Athens, GA 30601

Contact Planning Department:

(706) 613-3525/fax (706) 613-3444

During the summer of 1990, Athens and Clarke County voters passed a referendum approving a unified government, the second city-county consolidated government in Georgia and the twenty-eighth in the nation. Gwen O'Looney was elected as the first Chief Elected Officer (CEO) for the Athens-Clarke County Unified Government (a title now changed to Mayor and Chair). The new government retained the preservation ordinance and expanded its jurisdiction to encompass the entirety of Athens-Clarke County. Charged with generating a comprehensive plan as required by the Georgia Planning Act of 1989, Athens-Clarke County contracted with the University of Georgia's Institute of Community and Area Development (ICAD) to design and execute a process for public participation. Known as Athens-Clarke Tomorrow (ACT), the process initiated fourteen town meetings during 1992 and included nine issue work groups, two of which addressed historic preservation concerns. In 1993, the Athens-Clarke County Planning Department incorporated the results and an assessment of existing conditions within the Athens-Clarke County Comprehensive Plan, approved by the Georgia Department of Community Affairs and presented with a Georgia Planning Association Award for an outstanding, innovative, and effective planning process.

Subsequently, local preservation organizations and the Athens-Clarke County Historic Preservation Commission provided vital support to preservation initiatives, as varied as the adoption of Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (SPLOST) and a Local Option Tax Incentive for Historic Preservation. Funding from the 1987 SPLOST enabled full restoration of the Morton Theater, an effort which was honored by a 1994 Georgia Trust Award and nominated for a National Preservation Honor Award. The 1994 SPLOST secured funding for the development of the Lyndon Art Center, encompassing the historic Ware-Lyndon House, and the renovation of the Wray-Nicholson House, recently acquired following condemnation proceedings and an out of court settlement with the Christian College of Georgia. At the recommendation of the Historic Preservation Commission, the CEO and Commission passed the Local Option Tax Incentive for Historic Preservation, an incentive program providing property tax assessment freeze for eligible historic resources. The Historic Preservation Commission designated two landmarks in 1994. In 1995, the Historic Preservation Commission received a Certified Local Government (CLG) grant to develop design guidelines for new construction and sample architectural plans for affordable and compatible in-fill construction within historic districts. In partnership with the Georgia Historic Preservation Division, Athens-Clarke County is currently studying the economic benefits of historic preservation in Georgia. On the cusp of a new century, Athens' preservationists continue to integrate preservation and progress.

Zzz irst preservation initiative to save the Church-Waddel-Brumby HoDuring the late 1970s, ACHF continued to lead the preservation community. In 1977, ACHF's revolving fund once again preserved the Cheney House. The following year, AHS recommended the University of Georgia's School of Forest Resources for a Georgia Trust award for its preservation of White Hall. In 1973, the first historic preservation course was offered at the University of Georgia by the School of Environmental Design, which subsequently instituted the Historic Preservation Program in 1982. As a further asset to preservation activity, the Regional Preservation Program was initiated in 1978 with the first two Regional Development Centers (RDCs) to be assigned Preservation Planners being Northeast Georgia and Middle Flint. In 1979, the ACHF restored Fire Hall No. 2, owned by the City of Athens, which served as the new headquarters and a gallery space for the organization. Additionally, ACHF provided emergency loans to fund the restoration of the Lumpkin House and repair the roof of the Morton Theater. The most significant initiative led by ACHF occurred during this period, when ACHF attempted to convince the Athens City Council to adopt a historic preservation ordinance. Opponents claimed that no legal mechanism for establishing such an ordinance existed. In response, a special legislative committee, composed of ACHF President Robert Gair, University professor John C. Waters, and attorney Mel Hill, drafted the Georgia Historic Preservation Enabling Act, providing a base for the formation of local historic preservation ordinances and commissions.

Empowering Local Government: 1980-1995

The passage of the Georgia Historic Preservation Enabling Act in 1980 heralded a new decade and new advocates for preservation in Athens. As the most prominent preservation advocate throughout the 1970s, ACHF surged successfully forward with new preservation initiatives. In partnership with the ADDA, ACHF initiated an annual Upstairs Downtown Tour. Held from 1980 to 1988, the Upstairs Downtown Tour highlighted innovative uses of upstairs spaces and instigated leasing activity within downtown Athens. As a new preservation partner, ADDA managed preservation efforts when the National Trust for Historic Preservation chose Athens as one of the first five pilot cities for the Main Street Program in 1980. Early programs assisted the transformation of downtown retailing into specialty shops and restaurants to take advantage of the University's proximity and the market potential. The ADDA sponsored and coordinated special events designed to benefit both the campus and the central business district, such as the Downtown Athens Twilight Criterium and the Jazz Festival. In 1980, the Athens Area Chamber of Commerce converted Fire Hall No. 1 into office space and began to actively pursue heritage tourism when Athens became the gateway of the Antebellum Trail, a route designated by the state legislature. When suburban mini-malls and the new Georgia Square Mall began to impact the the downtown commerical business district in 1981, the College Square Project revitalized the area. Financed by the city, the project focused upon a creative redesign of College Avenue from Broad to Clayton Street, including wide walkways, lampposts, benches, flower beds, and shade trees. Investors and customers alike were attracted to the pleasant and historic environment.

In 1983, ACHF initiated an extensive educational campaign to develop community support for the adoption of a local historic preservation ordinance. The same year, the T.R.R. Cobb House, one of Georgia's and Athens' most significant structures, was dismantled and moved from Prince Avenue to Stone Mountain's

Old South

theme park. The loss of the Cobb House demonstrated the need for a protective ordinance. On November 4, 1986, Athens Mayor and Council unanimously adopted a historic preservation ordinance, which provided for the creation of a Historic Preservation Commission with the authority to recommend historic districts and landmarks and to review new construction and exterior alterations to designated properties. Property owners interested in preservation of their neighborhood and community began to organize; Woodlawn was the first historic district to receive designation. At the recommendation of the Historic Preservation Commission (HPC), the City Council designated four historic districts and several historic sites for protection under the local ordinance.

With this ordinance, Athens qualified as a Certified Local Government (CLG) in 1988, thus becoming eligible for numerous grants from the Historic Preservation Division of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources. In 1989, the Athens Planning Department created a staff position for a Historic Preservation Planner to coordinate preservation planning activities within the city. With the benefit of two matching grants, the HPC initiated the Historic Resources Survey, the most substantial survey of Athens-Clarke County's historic resources to date, and developed Design Guidelines, and educational brochures for historic property owners. Able to guide preservation efforts and protect historic properties, the HPC emerged as an important component of the preservation community.

The 1990s have been a pivotal period for Athens' preservation movement. Despite the proven value and substantial community support for preservation, two significant historic structures were destroyed. SPOA once owned St. Mary's Chapel, the 120-year-old Gothic Revival sanctuary on Oconee Street. However, restrictive covenants failed to prevent neglect and subsequent demolition of the building in March of 1990, when a wrecking ball destroyed all but the steeple for a condominium development, ironically named Steeplechase.

In May of 1990, Athens also suffered the loss of the Hull-Snelling House, a 150-year-old Greek Revival residence on Hull Street. The historic dwelling were razed by Christian College of Georgia when the Athens Mayor and Council voted not to designate the Hull Street Historic District. Subsequently, Holiday Inn paid Christian College $400,000 for the site and constructed a parking lot.

Other projects, as well threatened local historic resources. In 1987, a Special Local Option Sales Tax (SPLOST) referendum included the construction of a civic center. In 1989, the Clarke County Commission's construction plans for this civic center on Foundry Street required the demolition of significant buildings in the Warehouse Historic District, including Fire Hall No. 1 and the Talmadge Building. Demolition or relocation appeared eminent until many local preservationists joined community opposition to the initial architectural plans. Much of the foundation for the objections to the proposed designs was laid out in the Foundary Street Study, an architectural and design context which was previously developed by the City of Athens, Athens-Clarke Heritage Foundation, National Trust for Historic Preservation, and R.E.M./Athens, Ltd. through a Design Quality Panel. As a result of these efforts, Rabun Hatch & Associates prepared a new design, sensitive to the area's historic character and incorporating the 1912 Fire Hall No. 1. In 1990, the Athens-Clarke Heritage Foundation also hosted Project for Public Spaces workshops, where planners, designers, and administrators discussed planning and development alternatives for the Downtown East area, included within the boundary of the Warehouse Historic District.

Because of the concurrent and continuous nature of surveys, the following survey review encompasses all known survey efforts, evaluated through surviving survey reports, documentation results, and final products. Each summary acknowledges the sponsor(s) or source of funding, the expertise of surveyor(s), and the year of the survey. Bold type denotes the survey title. Referencing the standard terminology for National Register surveys, summaries designate the depth of survey as either reconnaisance or intensive. Within the context of this report, an additional assessment defines the scope of survey as either selective, implying survey of respresentative properties, or comprehensive, meaning the documentation of every historic resource within prescribed boundaries. Summaries also note the number of resources, range of construction dates, types of properties, and methods of documentation. The depository for documentation materials and the final product of each survey conclude each reference. Research results appear within a detailed chart (see page 17) and upon an updated compilation map of Survey of Historic/Archeological Properties (see page 18). A portfolio of all accessible survey reports resides in the Athens-Clarke County Planning Department.

In 1933, HABS began as an emergency funding project within the National Park Service and, in 1935, it became a cooperative effort between the National Park Service, the American Institute of Architects and the Library of Congress. Within the Athens-Clarke County vicinity, the selective survey documented one monument and thirty buildings, including five demolished and one relocated structure (see Appendix H). The HAER program, established in 1969, concentrated on engineering resources such as bridges and dams and documented no resources within Athens-Clarke County. Survey efforts compiled archival materials such as black and white photographs, information data sheets, and architectural measured drawings. The Library of Congress filed the records which are also published within The Georgia Catalog: Historic American Buildings Survey, the Heritage Room of the Athens-Clarke County Library secured microfilm copies of these records.

In 1967 the Athens-Clarke Heritage Foundation (ACHF), a citizen non-profit organization, conducted an initial survey of the Athens area. The Athens-Clarke Heritage Foundation House Survey sought to provide a convenient source of written and photographic information on buildings constructed in Athens before 1900. This selective survey documented 797 resources along streets in existence in the 19th century, utilizing Charles Morton Strahan's 1893

Map of Athens, Georgia

and excluding smaller buildings of similar or identical appearance to other survey sites. Although it emphasized dwellings, the survey also included commerical and institutional resources. Field research yielded a black and white photograph attached to an individual data sheet, which supplied reconnaisance level information regarding ownership, use, architect/builder, value, exterior appearance, date of construction, style, physical condition, and an evaluation of significance. Owner inquiry resulted in little additional information and eventually ceased because of time constraints. Dr. Kenneth Coleman, chairman of the survey project, placed the survey summary, data sheets, photographs, and negatives on permanent deposit in the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Georgia Libraries.

While employed by the Historic Preservation Division* of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, Patricia Irwin Cooper conducted the Historic Structures Survey: Clarke County, Georgia in 1975. This survey effort identified resources within the city limits of Athens and Winterville and several sites in the unincorporated sections of Clarke County. The endeavor documented 229 buildings, including 156 in Athens, 15 in Winterville, and 58 in Clarke County. The survey was selective with minimum documentation: field research produced a color slide and an information form for each resource. The survey form contained categories such as the site's original owner, style, facade material, outbuildings, plan, alterations, condition and significance; historical accounts and personal insights from current owners supplemented these categories. The survey report compiled a list of Athens-Clarke County's oldest sites, a list of endangered resources, and a list of sites and districts potentially eligible for nomination to the National Register. The Historic Preservation Division of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources received the original survey report, slides, and forms; the Northeast Georgia Regional Development Center and the Athens-Clarke County Planning Department retained copies of the forms.

Receiving a Certified Local Government (CLG) matching grant for $7000 in 1988, the City of Athens instigated a comprehensive and intensive Historic Resources Survey. The project assessed 1,422 sites, comprised of commerical, residential, and institutional properties within the city limits of Athens. Although originally intended to document the existing fifteen National Register listings and four districts, the survey completed the individual properties and only one of the districts. In 1989 an additional $6000 matching grant enabled the continuation of survey efforts in the three remaining districts and the development of a design guidelines brochure. Surveyors recorded information upon the Georgia Historic Resource Form and attached contact prints and photographs. Information relating to the current owner, site description and plan, historical context/significance, and UTM reference was omitted to expedite the survey; however, accurate architectural descriptions with professional terminology provided detailed information for each resource, cross-referenced to tax map numbers. The Athens-Clarke County Planning Department forwarded duplicates to the State Historic Preservation Office and retained the original forms, field maps, and negatives.

In 1992 the Historic Preservation Division of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources and the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation sponsored the State-Owned Historic Property Survey, financed by the Governor's discretionary fund In 1992 the Historic Preservation Division of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources and the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation sponsored the State-Owned Historic Property Survey, financed by the Governor's discretionary

Seeking to identify and document all resources owned or leased by the State of Georgia that were constructed in 1942 or earlier, this survey incorporated buildings, structures, sites, objects, and landscape features and omitted prehistoric sites and highway bridges. The Athens-Clarke County area possessed 85 of the 1175 historic resources identified within this comprehensive state-wide survey. The consultant intensively documented the resources upon the Georgia Historic Resources Form and utilized secondary resources. The Historic Preservation Division completed database entry and forwarded to the Athens-Clarke County Planning Department copies of the survey forms and a copy of the published report Held in Trust: Historic Buildings Owned by the State of Georgia.

Save Outdoor Sculpture!, a joint project of Smithsonian Institutions's National Museum of American Art (NMAA) and the National Institute for the Conservation of Cultural Property (NIC), implemented the largest arts and cultural volunteer project in 1992. Funded by the The Pew Charitable Trusts, The Getty Grant Program, and the Henry Luce Foundation, this private/public initiative sought to complete a national inventory and focus attention on the preservation of outdoor sculpture. Georgia SOS!, directed by Lisa Vogel, of the University of Georgia's School of Environmental Design, coordinated the identification and the basic condition assessment of 33 pieces of outdoor sculpture within Athens-Clarke County during 1993. Comprehensive and intensive field survey excluded grave markers/headstones, museum collections, commerative works, architectural structures, minor decorative architectural elements, mass-produced items, and machinery, weapons, or other implements not originally conceived as sculpture. Volunteers compiled on-site documentation upon survey questionnaires, library research, and black and white photographs. The Office of Preservation Services retained copies of the information and forwarded all originals to the Inventories of American Painting and Sculpture Department of the National Museum of American Art.

As a preliminary step in a community-wide preservation planning initiative, a private consultant conducted the Winterville Historic Resource Survey, sponsored by the Winterville Historic Preservation Committee and the City of Winterville and funded through the Georgia Department of Natural Resources' Historic Preservation Division. The intensive and comprehensive survey identified 83 properties in Winterville's city limits, within Clarke County but not within the jurisdiction of the Athens-Clarke County Historic Preservation Commission. Documenting properties deemed 50 years or older regardless of physical condition or integrity, the field survey yielded black and white photographs and contact prints, which were attached to the Georgia Historic Resource Forms. The survey report included a breakdown of buildings by architectural style, building type, and exterior materials and a recommendation of a multiple resource National Register nomination for one district and an individual property. The City of Winterville forwarded copies to the State Historic Preservation Office and the Athens-Clarke County Planning Department.

Through another Certified Local Government (CLG) matching grant, the Athens-Clarke County Planning Department commenced the Prince-Dougherty Corridor Study in 1993. The basis of the study was an intensive and comprehensive survey, which evaluated the visual aspects and evolutionary character of this major traffic corridor. The study documented 171 historic and non-historic properties along Prince Avenue and Dougherty Street. The North Athens Perimeter, intersecting the western end of Prince and the eastern end of Dougherty, served as a boundary; excluding two large, non-historic complexes at either end of the corridor. Field survey compiled a comprehensive building inventory and produced individual Georgia Historic Resources Forms with black and white photographs attached and UTM references omitted. Research efforts supplemented these forms with copies of historic photographs of existing or former buildings. The Athens-Clarke County Planning Department retained all originals and negatives and published the Prince-Dougherty Corridor Study to aid future planning efforts and to serve as a model study for traffic corridors.

In order to comply with the requirements of Georgia's Planning Act, the Athens-Clarke County Planning Department initiated the Comprehensive Plan Windshield Survey in 1993 to provide location and preliminary information on concentrations of historic resources. Neither comprehensive nor intensive, the survey included buildings constructed before 1932, except those owned by State or Federal Governments and those of significantly reduced integrity. Survey efforts noted landmarks and resources of outstanding quality and significance not previously surveyed. Although field survey identified all historic resources within the accessible, non-incorporated regions of the county, surveyors recorded only representative buildings within the city limits and residential neighborhoods. The survey produced color slides and used an abbreviated survey form, comprised of information regarding name, location, style, date of construction, and a preliminary determination of National Register eligibility. Assessing architectural styles, building types, dates of construction and median age of housing, the information resulted in the Historic Resources Element of the Athens-Clarke County Comprehensive Plan (July 1994), and the Athens-Clarke County Planning Department retained the forms and slides.

Guided by the Athens-Clarke County Historic Presevation Commission, a team of preservation graduate students from the University of Georgia implemented a Preservation Planning Survey in 1995. With the intention of creating a methodology for future surveys, the study developed a format and applied it to four preselected, residential areas. Comprehensive and intensive, this endeavor focused on buildings of integrity constructed prior to 1940 and documented 783 historic resources; comprehensive but reconnaissance survey efforts covered two more areas. The team adapted a field survey form for clarity and speed, generated Georgia Historic Resource Forms and included contact prints. The Athens-Clarke County Planning Department received forms and negatives and a copy of the Athens Preservation Planning Study.

In addition to such extensive surveys, individual sites and specific areas are often the subjects of survey efforts during the course of the local designation process, National Register nominations, and Certificates of Appropriateness and Section 106 reviews. Athens-Clarke County's Historic Preservation Planner and interns completed surveys requested by the Historic Preservation Commission, including the Hull Street area, the Cloverhurst area, and four individual dwellings of significance. Property owners and developers, seeking financial incentives, document their properties; the Puritan Mill complex serves as a recent example. Non-profit organizations, academic institutions, and government agencies sponsor research and survey of historic sites as well. Graduate students with the Masters of Historic Preservation program annually produce planning and preservation studies. Thematic or contextual surveys are also viable. A survey and subsequent National Register nomination of Athens-Clarke County's urban shotguns, a historic house form, is currently before Georgia's National Register Review Board. The Athens Historical Society is in the process of documenting cemeteries within the county.

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per conducted the Historic Structures Survey: Clarke County, Georgia in 1975. This survey effort identified resources within the city limits of Athens and Winterville and several sites in the unincorporated sections of Clarke County. The endeavor documented 229 buildings, including 156 in Athens, 15 in Winterville, and 58 in Clarke County. The survey was selective with minimum documentation: field research produced a color slide and an information form for each resource. The survey form contained categories such as the site's original owner, style, facade material, outbuildings, plan, alterations, condition and significance; historical accounts and personal insights from current owners supplemented these categories. The survey report compiled a list of Athens-Clarke County's oldest sites, a list of endangered resources, and a list of sites and districts potentially eligible for nomination to the National Register. The Historic Preservation Division of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources received the original survey report, slides, and forms; the Northeast Georgia Regional Development Center and the Athens-Clarke County Planning Department retained copies of the forms.

In the late 70s and early 80s, Athens-Clarke Heritage Foundation, as recipient of matching grant funds from the Historic Preservation Section* of the Department of Natural Resources, contracted separately with two preservation consultants, David Brown and Dale Jaeger, to survey historic areas of Athens and prepare nominations to the National Register. District listings resulting from this work were: Downtown Athens (1978), Cobbham (1978), Bloomfield (1985), Boulevard (1978), Boulevard (1985), Milledge Avenue (1985), Milledge Circle (1985), Woodlawn (1987), Reese Street (1987), Oglethorpe Avenue (1987), and West Hancock (1988).

Map of Athens, Georgia

From the middle section of Prince Avenue, about a mile northwest of the college gates, a ridge road of major significance branched off southward and followed the high ground between the North and Middle forks of the Oconee River as far as the mansion and mill village of Whitehall, some five miles from downtown. The in-town section of this road, named Milledge Avenue for the university's early benefactor, became Prince Avenue's closest rival as an avenue of grand homes.

Although ten of the twelve historic districts in Athens-Clarke County at the end of 1995 flank Prince and Milledge avenues, the great majority of homes in these districts represent not the wealthy but the middle class and blue-collar residential areas.

These rivers and ridges of Athens and Clarke County, the university campus and the young city on a hill north of it, together constituted the primary features defining early Athens. The land lay pleasantly in the surrounding countryside, rolling land of soft contours and high fertility, of meadowlands and forest glens, numerous streams and copious springs, and a temperate climate ideal for farming and no less conducive to academic pursuits.

Descriptive passages in the survey of historic resources, which appear in Chapter 4, not only furnish more detail on specific resources but also help to illustrate various facets of the community's growth and evolution over time.

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resistance, coming up the Savannah to the head of navigation at Augusta, then continuing on up the river and its western tributaries above the Fall Line. Then in 1773 the pressure of heavy debt to Indian traders persuaded the Creeks and Cherokees to cede more than two million acres of the Georgia Piedmont. This so-called

New Purchase

opened up for settlement the western half of the Savannah River basin extending sixty miles upstream from the Little River boundary of 1763.

The heart of the cession of 1773 was the valley of the Broad River, the Savannah's largest western tributary above the Fall Line. The Broad River Valley lies immediately east of the Oconee River watershed. The Georgia legislature initially designated the valley Wilkes County but later subdivided it into several counties, two of which, Oglethorpe and Madison, today touch the eastern edge of Clarke.

Settlers from Virginia and the Carolinas began flooding into the Broad River Valley on the eve of the Revolutionary War, while the future site of Athens still lay beyond the frontier in Indian territory. But the colonials managed to provoke the Cherokees into joining the war on the British side, so when the war ended in 1783, the Cherokees were obliged to give up the Oconee River watershed, which included the territory of modern Athens and Clarke County. By the time the Creeks approved this cession in 1790, the Georgia legislature had chartered a state university and were in the early stages of deciding where to put it.

Three years later an event of profound significance for the future of the antebellum South quietly took place near Savannah. Eli Whitney, a young Yale graduate visiting the plantation of Nathanael Greene in 1793, put together a simple machine that solved the difficult problem of separating the seed from the fibers of upland cotton. The device soon gave rise in the Deep South to the cotton kingdom based on slave labor.

The spread of cotton cultivation across central Georgia and up into the Piedmont increased public pressure to remove Native Americans entirely from the state and, simultaneously, began the wholesale destruction of the aboriginal forest. The most common method was to girdle the tree by cutting away a strip of bark around the trunk, and when it was dead, to set it afire to burn away the branches. The settlers left the massive tree trunks standing, planted crops among the charred and lifeless remnants of these once-magnificent forest monarchs, and usually endured the forlorn landscape with patience until the great roots rotted and the tree trunk fell of its own weight.

Although the state legislature chartered the university in 1785, the institution existed only on paper until 1801 when the appointed authority decided to locate it on land lying between the north and middle forks of the Oconee River a few miles above their confluence in what was to become Clarke County. The site chosen was a 633 acre tract donated by John Milledge on the west bank of the North Oconee River. Here on a broad, tree-shaded bluff a hundred and fifty feet above the river, the trustees established the initial unit of the university, which would be called Franklin College throughout the antebellum era.

Geography exerted a strong influence in determining the early growth of Athens and Clarke County. From any direction except the northwest, commerce and communication with Athens and Franklin College meant crossing the Oconee River, an intimidating barrier before the construction of bridges. The North Oconee, meandering southward through a rather steep-sided ravine half a mile east of the college gates, passed through Cedar Shoals, a section of rapids with exposed river bedrock adjacent to the college. The Middle Oconee, about three miles west of the college gates, also passed over shoals slightly farther downstream.

From the earliest times Native Americans followed deer tracks to these shoals to ford the river, establishing a trail used for east-west travel. The shoals also furnished early settlers a river crossing on their north-south Pickens Trail. When white settlement came, the river shoals of the Georgia Piedmont encouraged the construction of mills and factories driven by water power.

The campus of Franklin College during the antebellum era was confined mostly to the bluff overlooking the river. This was an almost level area about 200 yards wide that extended southward from the college gates some 400 yards before beginning a fairly steep descent into the vale of Tanyard Creek, which flowed from west to east into the North Oconee, severing the campus from the pastoral landscape to the southward.

The trustees soon sold off a slightly higher hill just north of the college gates, where the town of Athens began. As the town grew, Athenians laid out a grid pattern of streets. Of the five east-west streets, Front Street, now Broad, was the first to cross in front of the college gates. The next was Clayton, slightly up the southern slope, then Market (now Washington), Hancock on top of the hill, and finally Dougherty Street over on the northern slope. The north-south streets, from west to east, began with Pulaski and continued eastward with Hull and Lumpkin streets, College Avenue, and Jackson and Thomas streets.

College Avenue, extending northward from the college gates up over the crest of the hill to Dougherty Street, would eventually become the commercial and governmental center of Athens. The old Town Hall originally stood in the middle of Market (Washington) Street between Lumpkin and Hull. Its successor, the Athens City Hall, was built on top of the hill facing east on College Avenue between Washington and Hancock. In the downtown area of early Athens the better homes were built primarily on College Avenue and on Dougherty, Pulaski, Thomas, and Jackson Streets. Pulaski Street on the West and Thomas Street on the East intersected with Broad on the South and Dougherty on the North to form the four corners of the original grid. These boundaries continue to define the heart of downtown Athens today.

At the northwest corner of the grid, where Pulaski and Dougherty streets intersect, a low ridge, often well over a mile wide and with only gradual changes in elevation, extended northwestward for more than forty miles without crossing a stream. This natural high way would evolve from an Indian trail into an excellent ridge road. When it was designated the Federal Road in the 1820s, it linked Augusta and Athens commercially with the Cherokee nation in northwest Georgia and with middle Tennessee and central Kentucky. The discovery of gold in Cherokee Georgia in 1829 filled the Federal Road with fortune hunters and multiplied demands for Cherokee removal. Nine years later the Cherokees were forced out, opening up northwest Georgia to rapid settlement and turning this road into the main commercial artery serving Jefferson, Gainesville, and the Gold Country, with connections into the Tennessee Valley and beyond. Athenians eventually named their stretch of this important thoroughfare Prince Avenue.

The breadth of the ridge just out of town and the natural beauty of the landscape along Prince Avenue encouraged its development into an avenue of grand homes. Many of the properties were fair sized farms in a suburban setting, and virtually all contained acreage enough to include separate kitchen houses, vegetable gardens, servants' quarters, stables, barns, other outbuildings, and here and there a formal garden and a small orchard. By 1859, when this commercial artery was officially designated Prince Avenue, the double row of capital mansions, set back among spacious lawns and stately groves, had transformed the avenue into one of the most palatial streets in all of Georgia.

Scarcely two decades after Christopher Columbus made his epochal landfall in the West Indies, Spanish explorers were probing estuaries and rivers along the southeastern coast of North America. Hernando DeSoto was the first to penetrate the interior of the continent north of Florida. He brought an expedition of 500 soldiers to the west coast of Florida and set out northward in 1540 on an overland march that eventually took him through the territory of what would become seven of the southeastern United States.

As soon as DeSoto left the coast he found himself moving through an immense aboriginal forest. Except for coastal salt marsh, tidewater savannas, an occasional open meadow or burnt-over clearing in the interior, forest covered the entire Southeast, even the tops of the highest mountains. Cypress and pine of the coastal plain, lofty trees of mighty bulk, gave way below the Fall Line to hardwood forest dominated by oak and hickory, which covered the Piedmont up to the lower slopes of the mountains where the chestnut predominated and the tulip poplar and other cove hardwoods flourished. DeSoto came up through the Creek Indian territory of south and central Georgia but veered eastward before he reached the Cherokee country in the Georgia Piedmont.

During the next century the English founded settlements along the southeastern coast and sent explorers into the interior to establish a fur trade with the Creeks and Cherokees. To the English the aboriginal forest gave the appearance of an English park. The lifelong competition for sunlight necessary to reach climax growth had caused forest hardwoods to drop off their lower limbs and spread a dense canopy of leaves high above the forest floor. This choked out competing understory growth and left the deeply shaded forest floor covered mostly with grasses, ferns, mosses, and low shrubs.

Competition for sunlight also produced generous spacing between the massive tree trunks, rising aloft like columns of a cathedral to support the dense canopy above. Fur traders and early hunters discovered they could see great distances through the forest gloom and might ride, as Governor George Gilmer said in his Sketches, for several hours on a sunny day without seeing the sun, or veer off the trail and ride at full gallop through the forest with ease. English settlers came to prefer hardwood forest over all other types of land because of its fertility. Here the depth of spongy humus and rich topsoil, after countless centuries of undisturbed accumulation, could be measured not merely in inches but in feet.

Convenient sources of fresh water essential to farmstead settlement abounded in the Georgia Piedmont. Weather systems usually came out of the Southwest bearing moisture from the Gulf of Mexico up across the coastal plain to the Piedmont and mountains, where rainfall averages tended to increase with elevation. From an average of 45 to 50 inches in the Piedmont, annual rainfall increased to 70 inches in the Blue Ridge Mountains in the northeastern corner of the state, where mountain peaks commonly approach four thousand feet in altitude. Rivers and streams of the area, their clear waters unclouded by silt, carried away most of the run-off, but much of it sank into subterranean geological strata, which descended gradually in shelves from the mountains down to the Fall Line, providing an abundance of natural springs throughout North Georgia.

The eastern continental divide enters the northeastern corner of Georgia on the crest of the Blue Ridge and curves southward down across the Piedmont along the eastern edge of the Chattahoochee River basin west of Athens. As a result the rivers of Clarke and other counties of northeast Georgia flow southeastward to the sea. Foremost among them, the Savannah River rises on the eastern slope of the Blue Ridge and follows a fairly straight course down through Georgia's easternmost watershed. Immediately west of the Savannah River basin lies the watershed of the Ogeechee, which rises in the lower Piedmont, then the watershed of the Oconee River, which flows down from the foothills through Clarke County and the city of Athens.

Two nations of Native Americans, the Cherokees and a confederation of linguistic groups whom the English called Creeks, had conflicting territorial claims in the Georgia Piedmont at the time of first European contact. The people of both nations lived in clusters of towns and villages surrounded by clearings and fields where they practiced subsistence agriculture, but except for a small Creek settlement at Skull Shoals south of modern Athens, both had left the Georgia Piedmont largely unoccupied. The Piedmont forest teemed with small game and wildfowl, beaver, bear, and some bison, but it was the great herds of whitetail deer roaming the forest that became the primary cause of contention between the Creeks and Cherokees. The arrival of fur traders with their huge demand for deerskins only intensified the dispute.

The Creek confederation claimed territory covering most of modern Alabama and the southern two-thirds of Georgia. Their towns and villages, though, lay mostly in the coastal plain of the lower Chattahoochee River basin, some two hundred miles southwest of modern Athens.

The Cherokees claimed even more territory, about forty thousand square miles of the southern highlands north of the disputed boundary, which ran eastward across the Piedmont of Alabama and Georgia, passing through modern Clarke County just north of Athens. Within this princely domain, the Cherokees had actually established settlements only in the valleys of three rivers that originated in northeast Georgia. Nearest to modern Athens were the Lower Towns about fifty miles northeastward on the headwaters of the Savannah River. The other Cherokee settlements lay west of the Blue Ridge on rivers that drained northwestward into the Tennessee Valley. These were the Middle Towns around modern Franklin in North Carolina and the Overhill Towns in the Tennessee Valley, both in the Little Tennessee River watershed; and the Valley River Towns in the watershed of the Hiwassee River in far western North Carolina.

White settlement of the Georgia Piedmont came late in the colonial period. After the Georgia Trustees secured the charter in 1732 and James Oglethorpe helped to found Savannah the next year, the first land cession confined colonial settlement to the tidewater lying between the Savannah River on the north and the Altamaha River on the south, about halfway down the coast to Florida.

Of the three major objectives in founding Georgia--imperialism, philanthropy, and mercantilism--the Trustees were able to achieve only the first. In 1742 at Bloody Marsh on Saint Simon's Island, Oglethorpe turned back a Spanish attack, effectively ending the Spanish menace and securing Georgia for the British empire. But the philanthropic and mercantilistic objectives failed so thoroughly that the Trustees threw in the towel a year early in 1752. At this point the Crown began to ease restrictions on the Georgia settlers, most notably the one prohibiting slavery in Georgia. The noble experiment in altruism was abandoned, and Georgia rapidly metamorphosed into the same breed of colony as the Carolinas and Virginia, with a slave labor system and a plantation economy.

The so-called Cherokee War with South Carolina in 1761-62 cost the Cherokees a large land cession in that colony. When the French and Indian War closed in 1763, Georgia gained the coastal tidewater down to the Florida border and all the coastal plain between the Savannah on the east, the Ogeechee on the west, and up over the Fall Line to a small stream called Little River about twenty-five miles above Augusta.

The eastern continental divide enters the northeastern corner of Georgia on the crest of the Blue Ridge and curves southward down across the Piedmont along the eastern edge of the Chattahoochee River basin west of Athens. As a result, the rivers of Clarke and other counties of northeast Georgia flow southeastward to the sea. Foremost among them, the Savannah River rises on the eastern slope of the Blue Ridge and follows a fairly straight course down through Georgia's easternmost watershed. Immediately west of the Savannah River basin lies the watershed of the Ogeechee, which rises in the lower Piedmont, then the watershed of the Oconee River, which flows down from the foothills through Clarke County and the city of Athens.

Of the three major objectives in founding Georgia--imperialism, philanthropy, and mercantilism--the Trustees were able to achieve only the first. In 1742 at

Bloody Marsh

on Saint Simon's Island, Oglethorpe turned back a Spanish attack, effectively ending the Spanish menace and securing Georgia for the British empire. But the philanthropic and mercantilistic objectives failed so thoroughly that the Trustees threw in the towel a year early in 1752. At this point the Crown began to ease restrictions on the Georgia settlers, most notably the one prohibiting slavery in Georgia. The noble experiment in altruism was abandoned, and Georgia rapidly metamorphosed into the same breed of colony as the Carolinas and Virginia, with a slave labor system and a plantation economy.

Into the cession of 1763 settlement followed the path of least