I’m not sure if this was a primary residence or a tenant house but it’s located on what appears to be an historic farm, just outside the Monticello city limit. There’s also an abandoned general store or restaurant across the highway, though it may not be related to this property.
This is one of my earliest photographs for Vanishing Georgia, made in 2008, and I imagine the place is long gone. It was located on TV Towers Road. This is the back side of the structure; there was no other way to photograph it. I thought it a bit unusual then and still do, but I have encountered a few tenant structures with this boxy hip roof elsewhere. I’m identifying it as a tenant house because I can’t imagine what else it could be.
This perfect example of Georgia’s most common house type is like countless others that later added a wing for use as a kitchen or bedroom. I’ve said many times that these houses weren’t fancy, but they were built better than most houses of today.
This is an important vernacular house, but it’s difficult to determine its original layout. It may have originated as a dogtrot, but was later transformed into a central hallway form. The addition of another door at the front changed its layout at some point. Significantly, the detached kitchen remains.
I made this photograph on 17 June 2009 and the image got lost in my archives, until now. I don’t recall where in Randolph County this structure was located, but it was one of my early favorites. I believe it was somewhere between Benevolence and the now demolished Hour of Prayer Church, if that helps anyone in pinpointing its whereabouts. The single-pen style, while equally distributed among white and black laborers, is sometimes referred to as “Cracker”. It’s one of Georgia’s most widespread [and endangered] rural housing types of the late 19th and early 20th century and is often associated with tenancy, which in Georgia usually meant farming or turpentining. It was also popular in textile mill villages. As seen on this example, most single-pen cottages featured a shed room at the rear.
This home was the center of a small historic farm, on which a couple of outbuildings survived when I photographed it in 2017. It’s similar to the farmhouse my father and his siblings grew up in, though theirs was a bit larger and was later sided with brick and somewhat modernized. I mention this only because it was such a common house type on small farms throughout Georgia and many examples survive in various states of renovation and neglect.
This is the kind of house I love to find, simple and functional, with tar paper siding and a chimney crafted of local stone. The overhanging eaves suggest it’s probably a relic of the late 19th century.
This is an interesting old farmhouse in the County Line Baptist Church neighborhood, set back from the road on what appears to be an historic farm. The form is a bit unusual. It’s a central hallway cottage, made to look larger by a hip roof. The porch roof has been extended to the left to accommodate a carport. The sidelights would suggest the house likely dates to the late 19th century.
This historic farmstead is located near the Broad Level community of northern Long County, an area that was once a center of turpentine production and timber cultivation. There are several surviving barns and outbuildings, including one roofed with Ludowici Tile. I’m not sure about its history, but chances are it was connected in some way to the turpentine industry. It has been relatively well preserved, a great example of a “middle class” working farm from the early years of the 20th century.
This home is obviously still well-loved by the family who call it home. It’s a central hallway with Queen Anne porch posts and a half story above the main floor. A shed room at the rear of the house and an attached kitchen complete the scene, a classic of vernacular architecture and rural Georgia.
Vanishing Georgia: Photographs by Brian Brown 