The Welaunee Inn originally served as housing for unmarried female employees of the Welaunee Mill, essentially a dormitory. Built in the Tudor Revival style in 1923 [some sources date it to 1920], it had 26 rooms. By the 1950s it was often referred to as the Village Inn, or simply, the Inn. It was sold by the mill in 1966. It’s a massive building, located on Broad Street near the center of town, and has rear-facing wings at either end. It’s still in good condition and though empty at present, has so much potential.

It’s best remembered today not as a hotel but, as Darrell Huckaby wrote in the Newton Community Magazine, “…the Center of Georgia’s Culinary Universe”. He noted, “In the 1950s and into the 1960s, Mrs. Effie Boyd served up some of the best Southern cooking this side of Heaven, from fried chicken and baked ham to roast turkey and country fried steak.” He recalled that Brown’s Guide to Georgia, the state’s periodical travel bible for many years, christened it the state’s best meat-and-three year after year after year. He also said that mill workers didn’t get lunch breaks during the week but folks from “town”, i.e. Covington, were faithful patrons. On Sundays, he said, people from everywhere would line up for hours to sample her Southern favorites. And, “If you have all those vegetables, you have to have cornbread and biscuits with which to sop. Effie Boyd’s biscuits were as good as anybody’s biscuits who ever sifted flour, and her cornbread came in pones, muffins or sticks, depending on the day of the week and her mood.”

Porterdale Historic District, National Register of Historic Places