An architectural survey notes that this building was “constructed by Alex Tole as Tole’s Undertaking. The business was founded in 1892 and Alex Tole was one of the few who could afford to buy a stained glass picture of himself in his church, the First African Baptist Church. It is uncertain if he ever saw the finished window prior to his death in 1915. Mr. Henry Tole (Alex Tole’s brother) took over the business after his brother’s death. The “837 Club” would meet on the second floor of the building and consisted of men who would get together and play cards, etc. They rented the space from the Funeral Home.”
Richard A. Pierce was the first to develop 9th Street as an exclusive business district for the Black community. The intersection of 9th Street and 5th Avenue was called the Magic Corner for its central location and the Pierce Building was known as the Ninth Street Mecca. According to the Colored Columbus Directory and Year Book of 1926-1927, Richard A. Pierce (1877-1934) was a highly successful entrepreneur. He was the owner of this structure, which housed the Ninth Street Drug Store, an insurance office, a dental office, Ethel Spencer’s piano school, Anne Spencer’s Accessory Store, and the Pierce Auditorium, a third floor entertainment space which featured live dances and other entertainment. He also owned the Pierce Pocket Billiard Parlor and more than eighty tenant dwellings. He was the largest Black property owner in Columbus in his time.
Like the neighboring Sconiers Building, the Pierce Office Building is a landmark of Black Columbus and should be considered for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places. Richard Pierce and John L. Sconiers were pioneers in Black business in the Jim Crow era, and succeeded in spite of the challenges that were inherent to their interests.
The corner of 9th Street and 5th Avenue was the commercial and cultural center of Black Columbus throughout much of the 20th century in an area known as the Liberty District. John Leonard Sconiers, Sr., (1884-1959) was one of its biggest boosters. His Sconiers Funeral Home, originally located in the small house to the left of the Sconiers Building, was established here circa 1916 and is the oldest Black-owned business in Columbus.
The corner space on the ground floor of the Sconiers Building was once occupied by the Laborers Savings and Loan Company, of which Mr. Sconiers served as president. Other commercial businesses occupied the two remaining ground spaces. More business and professional offices, including the Atlanta Life Insurance Company, occupied the second floor, and the third floor served as Sconiers Hall, an auditorium used for entertainment, conventions, assemblies, and lodge meetings. Later businesses included the Afro-American Life Insurance Company, Guaranty Life Insurance Company, barber Charles Johnson, and beautician Eula Jones. These businesses were central to the development of a Black middle class in Columbus and this building is an important link to that history.
First African Baptist Church is the oldest Black congregation in Columbus. In 1840, after 11 years of worshiping with White congregants of Ephesus Baptist Church, enslaved members, along with free people of color, formed the African Baptist Church.
They first met in the former home of Ephesus Baptist, built in 1830 and vacated for a larger sanctuary. White ministers would serve the African Baptist Church until the early 1860s. In 1862, a gift to the African Baptist Church from Ephesus allowed construction of a new chapel. The first Black minister was Rev. Harry Watson.
A fire claimed the new church in the 1870s and a brick structure replaced it in 1881. The new church was located at 6th Avenue and 11th Street and the name was changed to Sixth Avenue Baptist Church. In the 1880s and 1890s, discord among members led to the formation of Metropolitan Baptist Church and Friendship Baptist Church.
The present church was built in 1915, during the pastorate of Rev. J. H. Carter. It grew from the membership of earlier and disparate congregations and was christened First African Baptist Church. In one form or another, it has served the Black community of Columbus for the better part of two centuries. The “Mother of the Blues”, Gertrude Pridgett (later known as Ma Rainey) was baptized at First African Baptist.
This structure is first listed in the Columbus city directory in 1916 as the parsonage for the adjacent First African Baptist Church. The Queen Anne architecture suggests a slightly earlier construction date (circa 1880s-1890s), but this is all the information I’ve been able to locate.
This facade is what remains of the front office of the Bibb Manufacturing Company’s 750,000 square foot Columbus Mill, begun in 1900 and expanded upward toward 1st Avenue until 1920. It was the centerpiece of the company’s Bibb City. A massive fire in 2008 destroyed all of the facility except for this small section. The large clock in the pediment is its most distinguishing feature. At its peak in the 1940s, the Columbus Mill employed over 2,500 people and was the largest cotton mill in the United States. Bibb City was a self-contained municipality, with housing, retail, schools, and other public facilities.
Independent of Columbus until incorporation in 2000, Bibb City remains a distinct neighborhood.
Bibb City Historic District, National Register of Historic Places
This outstanding Queen Anne cottage in the Rose Hill neighborhood of Columbus was the childhood home of Alma Woodsey Thomas (1891-1978), a nationally prominent African-American artist and cultural icon. Interestingly, the home was located in an otherwise exclusively white neighborhood. A 2001 fire damaged the house but it was restored soon thereafter.
Family tradition states that the manuscript for The Souls of Black Folk, by W.E.B. Dubois, was typed on the front porch of the Thomas home by Alma Thomas’s cousin, Inez, who was Dubois’s secretary. Alma’s parents, Amelia Cantey (?-1938) and John Harris Thomas (1860-1942), were members of Columbus’s small but prosperous upper middle class Black community. Nonetheless, the family moved to Washington, D. C., in 1907, to escape the racial tensions of the Jim Crow South.
Alma Thomas enrolled at Howard University and in 1924 was that school’s first fine arts graduate. She later earned her masters degree from Columbia University. Thomas had a successful career as a teacher at Washington’s Shaw Junior High School for 35 years. Among her accomplishments were the organization of an Arts League and the development of a program to create art galleries within local schools. In 1943, she helped establish the Barnett Aden Gallery, one of the first Black-owned galleries in the United States. Ms. Thomas retired from teaching in 1960 to focus on her own art, focusing on abstraction as a member of the Washington Colorist School. A significant figure in Washington’s art world, she was associated with the Little Paris Group and Howard University’s Gallery of Art.
Thomas was the first Black woman to have a solo show at the Whitney Museum and the first to have a work in the White House permanent collection. Her work is collected by the National Gallery of Art, Whitney Museum, Corcoran Gallery, and the Smithsonian Institution, among many other venerable institutions. NASA owns several of Thomas’ paintings from her “Space” series.
This eclectic home, featuring elements of Craftsman, Colonial Revival, and Neoclassical Revival styles, is located near the Secondary Industrial School in the Waverly Terrace neighborhood. Typical of early-20th-century planned communities, Waverly Terrace features numerous architectural styles.
Waverly Terrace was a streetcar suburb which grew out of G. Gunby Jordan’s (1846-1929) Waverly Farm, a large property he owned on the outskirts of downtown Columbus. Jordan was president of the board of education and his influence brought the Secondary Industrial School to the neighborhood, not only as an incentive for development but also for the vocational training it provided to potential future employees of his many business concerns. This was a stabilizing factor in the growth of Waverly Terrace.
Waverly Terrace Historic District, National Register of Historic Places
Columbus has a large number of historic schools still standing, many of which serve various purposes. The Secondary Industrial School, in the Waverly Terrace neighborhood, was one of the first co-ed institutions in the nation to combine academics and vocational training. When it opened in 1906, it offered millinery, dressmaking, and business training for girls, and carpentry, pattern-making, machinist and business training, as well as cotton mill work. The school’s name changed to Columbus Industrial High School in 1912, and became Columbus Junior High School in 1939.
The monumental structure was one of the final works of J. W. Golucke, an architect primarily known for his courthouse designs.
The Cedars was built for Col. John Banks (1797-1870) in 1837. It got its name from the cedar trees which lined the long driveway that led to the house from the old Wynnton Road. The floor plan consisted of eight rooms with a hall running the length of the house. A dirt-floored basement, entered from the outside, was used as the slave quarters. The main house was built of handmade deep rose colored bricks covered with stucco. This was marked off in large rectangles to resemble blocks of stone. The four Ionic columns on the front portico are stuccoed brick. The roofline was changed in 1885, elevating a much flatter original configuration.
A prominent attorney, John Banks was a native of Elbert County and a pioneer settler of Columbus. His obituary in the 24 September 1870 edition of the Atlanta Constitution noted: “For a while he was a grocery merchant in Augusta, the firm name being Banks & Baird. He has resided near Columbus over thirty-five years, and was engaged in various business in this city – grocery, banking, manufacturing, besides farming extensively – and accumulated a large property, much of which escaped the casualties of war.”
According to the nomination form of this property to the National Register of Historic Places, Banks was involved in the Indian Wars and first visited Columbus at the behest of Governor Troup to accompany General LaFayette on his trip from Milledgeville to Alabama. He was a founder of the Planters and Mechanics Bank of Columbus and a co-owner, with John E. Dawson, of the Howard Cotton Mill. He and his wife Sarah A. Watkins Banks (1803-1881) had 12 children. Four of their sons died in Confederate service.
