This beautiful church has a near-identical twin in the Rochelle United Methodist Church, about 30 miles away. This style was widely popular between the late-19th and early-20th centuries and plans were often prefabricated and built by local contractors.
The old First National Bank building is now home to a French-style market and cafe, The Shoppes at Fourth and Cherry, and is a good repurposing of Ocilla’s most significant remaining commercial building. Brenda Crain, whose husband Terry restored the building with Lisa Davis, writes that it was originally a divided building, anchored by the bank but also containing a hardware and grocery store.
The City of Ocilla notes in an Historic Preservation Standards document: “This building housed the First National Bank of Ocilla. The bank printed $1,027,670 dollars’ worth of national currency including over $5,000 rare red seal national bank notes. This national bank opened in 1907 and stopped printing money in 1935.”
By the 1920s, the bank was known as the Georgia State Bank.
