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
Identifying this school in my hometown has been a bit of a challenge. When I worked at the Fitzgerald-Ben Hill County Library in high school in the 1980s, I assisted on the Bookmobile and we regularly stopped beside this building and it was referred to as the Callie Garbutt School, likely due to its proximity to the church of the same name. It was not in use as a school at that time and may have been a neighborhood resource center.
It’s the fourth and final school to have been built in Fitzgerald’s cotton mill village. Two small schools originally served the area and were replaced circa 1910-1915 by a stone veneer building known simply as the Cotton Mill School. This structure, in the Mid-Century Modern or International Style, opened in 1957.
Our friend at the Georgia High School Basketball Project who knows these schools better than anyone I know did some digging and shared the following history:
This was built as Hunter Elementary. It was not an equalization school.
Closing seems to have been in 1965, or within a year or two of that. It was a Ben Hill County School. Fitzgerald still had its own city system then.
The name was previously Cotton Mill, but almost assuredly changed in 1957 when the Macon News confirmed the new building opened.
Looking at the state school directories, the building was possibly named for the Ben Hill County school superintendent, J.C. Hunter. Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve heard of one of the new school buildings named for a superintendent.
I’m shocked it was actually built.
Hunter was four classrooms. The state was normally not into building schools that small. Hunter was close enough to have gone to another county school or for the county to have made arrangements with a city school.
It was grades 1-8 in 1964-65. I can’t find any articles in available online papers on its closure, but the state would have been pressuring Ben Hill to close it at the very least because there were four teachers for eight grades.
The old Hunter building housed a Headstart program in 1980. It had been remodeled in 1972 to educate mentally challenged students.
This church in the Fitzgerald Cotton Mill was named for Callie Belle Phillips Garbutt (1869-1940), who, with her husband Moses Wadley Garbutt (1869-1937), came to Fitzgerald from Emanuel County. The Garbutt family were prominent entrepreneurs involved in many of the businesses that dominated the economic backbone of South Georgia at the turn of the last century, including timber, cotton mills, and real estate. Though I haven’t been able to locate a history of the congregation, the property was likely given to the church by the Garbutt family and therefore named for Mrs. Garbutt.
Callie Garbutt Baptist Church was established in 1907 and the first church building was of typical wood frame construction, as best I can discern. The present structure was built in 1978; it was designed by John Dennis, Jr., who was the third generation of a prominent Macon architecture firm.
The mills were the center of life in the town of Porterdale, and the Porterdale Mill, built in 1899, was the best known. It remains an engineering wonder, spanning about 800 feet of the Yellow River. A 125-foot stone dam was essential to the operation of the mill and is a landmark in its own right. During the early 20th century, the Porterdale mills manufactured more cotton rope than any other mill in the nation, and during World War II, they were the leading supplier of rope to the United States Navy.
The abandoned mill was later converted into housing, known as the Porterdale Mill Lofts, and still serves the community in this incarnation.
Porterdale Historic District, National Register of Historic Places
This old brick mill building, with its distinctive towers, is located just beside I-75 north of Forsyth. It was a landmark on trips to and from Atlanta when I was a child. It’s an old cotton mill, perhaps the Brighton Mill, but was later part of Bibb Manufacturing Company, which built a modern mill behind it sometime after World War II. Today, it’s home to a discount furniture business. I will update when I learn more about the history.
I first thought this to be a commissary but Hugh Harris West writes that this was not a commercial structure. It was a shotgun cotton mill house and I knew the families who lived there in the ’40’s and ’50’s. There was an identical house to the right of this. I do not know what is stored, if anything, in this structure now. The exterior window treatments were changed when it ceased to be a dwelling.
Now re-purposed as condominiums, Eagle & Phenix Mills is among the most historic industries in Columbus. Per their website: Cotton milling operations began on this site when William H. Young established the Eagle Mills. In 1860 when Mr. Young absorbed the nearby Howard Factory, Eagle Mills became the second largest mill in Georgia. The Eagle Mills produced material for Confederate uniforms and other critical goods during the Civil War at the site of our present Mill #1. Because of slow communication a land battle was still being fought in our area after the peace treaty had been signed by Lee and Grant to end the war. Federal forces over-whelmed the defenders of Columbus, crossed the river and burned the Eagle Mills buildings. Mill # 1 was rebuilt in 1869.
The present Mill #1 was rebuilt in 1869 and renamed the Eagle & Phenix Mills to symbolize rising from the ashes. Mill #2 followed in 1872 and portions of Mill #1 in 1885. The other historic buildings remaining on the site are the Boiler House (circa 1878), the Administration Building (circa 1878) and the Machine Shop (circa 1886).
During this period of expansion, the Eagle & Phenix quadrupled its size becoming the largest mill in the south by 1878. The mill was distinctive because it produced over 100 varieties of cotton and woolen goods. Eagle & Phenix was known for its technological sophistication and the services it provided its workers. One of these services was the Eagle & Phenix Bank. Unfortunately, this period of rapid expansion was followed by economic hard times brought about by changes in the market. The mill went into receivership and was purchased by G. Gunby Jordan in 1896. One of Mr. Jordan’s investors was W. C. Bradley. G. Gunby Jordan owned the mill from 1896 to 1915 while W. C. Bradley served on the board. From various correspondences, it seems that Mr. Jordan suggested that Mr. Bradley accept the presidency of the mill. W. C. Bradley did accept the presidency and ultimately owned the Eagle & Phenix Mill from 1915 until 1947.
After ownership passed through various hands in the ensuing years, it was reacquired by the Bradley Company in 2003 and has once again become a symbol of Columbus.
Columbus Historic Riverfront Industrial District, National Historic Landmark
