For a long time, I didn’t appreciate the simple aesthetics of the Mid-Century Modern and Modernist architecture that defined the post offices of the 1950s and 1960s, but as I’ve gotten older I’ve changed my mind. The longer I look at the simple lines, the more I like them. Many have been decommissioned to make way for larger post offices in growing communities and original examples are getting scarcer.
So far, I’ve been unable to locate any history for this building, which is used as a quadraplex apartment house today. It may have originated as a boarding house, or even a private residence. It has likely been expanded and therefore overlooked by historic surveys.
This imposing structure at the crossroads of US Highway 41 and Main Street in downtown Hahira was built circa 1940-1941 to replace an earlier hotel lost to fire circa 1939. Dr. E. J. Smith was an early owner, and many of the rooms were initially rented to local teachers. Dr. Smith’s daughter, Dorothy Salter, later operated this hotel, and another property known as the Wal-Dot, which may have been a motel, with her husband. The old hotel was converted to apartments in the 1990s.
According to the South Georgia Conference of the United Methodist Church: This church is thought to have been constituted in 1834. Henry Audulf gave the land for the first church, but there were no recorded deeds so, on May 7, 1845, W. A. Scandrett paid Henry Audulf’s son, John, one hundred dollars for the land. The first building was constructed on half an acre north of Broad Street but it was destroyed by a tornado… The second building was also destroyed by a tornado. Services were conducted in the school building until a church was built north of the present business section. The sanctuary was used until 1912. Under the pastorate of Rev. J. H. Allen, a new lot was purchased on the corner of Phillips Street and Hamilton Avenue and the present sanctuary was constructed.
Richland Historic District, National Register of Historic Places
Uptown Residential Historic District, National Register of Historic Places
I believe part of this house was removed but it still has the appearance of a middle class house type, popular from circa 1890-1920, known as a New South Cottage.
In a town with few grocery options, a butcher shop was an important business. I’m not sure if this building always served that purpose, or if it’s included in the historic district, but it probably should be by now.
Lumpkin Commercial Historic District, National Register of Historic Places
This building located beside the old jail in downtown Lumpkin has always caught my attention, though it turns out to be a newer arrival to this historic community. Our friend Mac Moye relates that it was the Mathis Store, originally located at nearby Louvale. He notes: It was going to be torn down, and Bill Singer bought it and moved it to town.
Fitzgerald’s first general hospital was built in the late 1920s or early 1930s to replace Dr. Dudley B. Ware’s much smaller convalescent hospital on Central Avenue.
My grandmother worked here in the 1950s and my mother and father were born here. It was used by the community until 1974 when a more modern facility, Dorminy Memorial Hospital [now Dorminy Medical Center] opened. When I was growing up, the hospital housed the Cooperative Extension office and other governmental offices.
It was lost to arson in 2012.
Moring’s was the retail center of Soperton for many years and would have sold a little bit of everything, in an era before big box stores.
Vanishing Georgia: Photographs by Brian Brown 