Tag Archives: Georgia Shotgun Stores & Offices

Five Points Grocery, Macon County

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Exterior view of Five Points Grocery with a Pepsi sign, surrounded by trees and a dirt road.

Five Points Grocery is located at a busy curve on Georgia Highway 26, and though I had passed it many time on earlier travels, I had never stopped until a recent trip to Columbus. As Mike McCall and I were photographing the little shotgun building, one of the co-owners, Naomi Weaver, waved and invited us inside. The store was closed that day for the preparations for a community wedding, but she was a gracious host, not rushed or bothered by all our questions.

Exterior view of Five Points Grocery, an iconic country store, located near Montezuma on Georgia Highway 26.

Naomi related that she didn’t know a lot of the specific history of the building, but I gathered it was likely built in the 1920s or 1930s. It would have been a retail anchor of the nearby Flint River Farms, a New Deal resettlement project that helped area farmers build homes and buy property in the darkest days of the Great Depression.

Naomi Weaver, in a gray sweatshirt with 'WHERE YOU BELONG' printed on it stands behind a counter filled with various items at Five Points Grocery.

It’s rare to find stores like this today, and even rarer to find them vibrant and still at the heart of their communities. While the owners have added a storage area at the back of the building, which Naomi was rightfully proud of, the interior of the store itself is largely unchanged from what it would have looked like over half a century ago.

Interior of a small grocery store featuring a display of various bread packages on a shelf, with a menu board labeled 'Mom's Kitchen' visible in the background.

Naomi noted that Mom’s Kitchen, which serves early breakfasts to scores of busy farmers and farmhands, was one of the biggest draws at Five Points Grocery.

Interior of Five Points Grocery featuring shelves stocked with snacks, a Pepsi vending machine, and seating area with blue chairs. A wall clock is visible.

This part of the store is reserved for anyone who just wants to sit around and shoot the breeze. In that way, it’s as authentic as any country store I’ve found. With the instantly gratified and hurried world that technology and mass market retail have wrought, it really is rewarding to come across places like Five Points Grocery and people like Naomi Weaver.

Interior of Five Points Grocery featuring shelves stocked with various food items and beverages, with taxidermy deer heads mounted on the wall.

This is deep in Macon County Mennonite country, and if you aren’t familiar, the Mennonites of Macon County have been known for their hospitality and good food for a couple of generations. Alva and Sara Yoder opened the landmark Yoder’s Deitsch House and Bakery just up the road toward Montezuma in July 1984 and its been a destination for people from all over the region since then. On the day we visited with Naomi, we also stopped at Yoder’s and it was packed as usual.

Interior of Five Points Grocery featuring a drink cooler filled with various beverages, a cash register area, a chair, and deer mounts on the walls.

Shotgun Store Ruins, Morris

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An old, abandoned wooden store leaning to one side, surrounded by trees and overgrown vegetation.

This shotgun form store or office building is located next door to the larger general store building. One of two extant commercial structures in Morris, it is near collapse.

Shotgun Store, Gardi

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This was a new discovery for me yesterday. It’s obviously a general store, judging by the form, and has long been closed. The middle of the building is sagging so badly that my initial though was that it won’t be around much longer, but it has likely looked like this for a long time. They don’t build them like this anymore.

Commissary, Tattnall County

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Whether a country store or just a commissary, this structure is part of a group of salvaged and rescued buildings, most of which were moved to the Hughland area for preservation many years ago. It’s possible that this building was original to the location, though I have no background information to confirm either way.

Post Office, Mystic

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This shotgun style building originally served as a store, if I recall correctly, but has been the Mystic post office for many years. My father and I have bought stamps and sent mail from here on several occasions and it’s an experience in itself. It still has a tiny wood-paneled lobby with the old-fashioned mail boxes. And it’s only open for a couple of hours each day. Call me delusional, but I think it’s important for small communities to have services like this. Irwinville lost its post office a few years back and it’s still sorely missed.

Shotgun Store, Oglethorpe

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The first time I photographed this building, about 15 years ago, it was painted yellow and known as the Court House Deli. It’s located across the street from the Macon County Courthouse. It’s now known as the Bowlegged Grill and was still open the last time I was in the area. I believe it was a originally a store or office and is typical of the shotgun form buildings that were once common as commercial and office spaces.

Commissary, Hard Cash

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The only reference I could find about Hard Cash was that the place name appears on an 1894 Southern Railway map. This indicates it was a railroad siding, perhaps with a freight depot for shipping whatever goods were being produced. I’m imagining cotton or even corn, but it may have encompassed a lot of different products. As to the Hard Cash aspect, I suspect it referred to a business owner not running credit accounts, and only accepting “hard cash”. That may be overthinking it, but it’s how I see it.

This old shotgun store was likely a commissary, serving farm workers or other laborers who lived in the area.

Hotel Lanier Mural, Circa 1930, Putnam County

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An old shotgun store on US Highway 129 in southwestern Putnam County, long hidden by vegetation, has recently been exposed, and along with it, a hand-painted sign advertising the Hotel Lanier in Macon. The sign likely dates from the 1920s-1930s. The sides of buildings, especially stores and barns, were often used for advertising, essentially the billboards of their day. Much of US Highway 129 [sections of which were known as the Dixie Highway] was paved by the late 1920s or early 1930s, and as one of the first major improved north-south arteries in Georgia, was valuable real estate to advertisers. The Lanier House, on Mulberry Street, was considered a “crown jewel” in antebellum Macon, owned by Sidney Lanier’s grandparents. After a fire in the early 1900s, it was remodeled and renamed the Hotel Lanier, but remained a popular gathering place until at least World War II. It was razed in 1975.

General Store, Jasper County

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I’m not positive that this old shotgun store was in Jasper County. I photographed driving between Monticello and Eatonton, and can’t relocate it on maps. I’ll gladly update if someone knows its exact whereabouts. It’s a great example and still displays an old Coca-Cola sign, dating to no later than the 1940s. The rusted tin always gets my attention and my mind wanders, imagining the hard-working people who gathered here to buy Co-Colas and swap tales. The store was probably closed by the 1950s or early 1960s.

Hayston, Georgia

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Southeast of Covington near Mansfield is the nearly vanished settlement of Hayston. Marshall McCart, who gives the history of Newton County a digital presence with The Piedmont Chronicles, notes that the community was first settled by Robert Luther Hays, one of 25 children of George Newton Hayes [who later dropped the ‘e’ from his surname], a pioneer settler of Newton County. Robert Luther [who had 18 children himself] and several of his siblings settled in the area that would become Hayston. As McCart notes, the community was largely made up of immediate family.

Nonetheless, it supported stores, industry, and had schools and churches. A Central of Georgia depot once stood in the heart of the community. Robert Luther’s son, Alexander Hays, owned the store pictured in this post, and it later passed to his son, H. S. “Stoney” Hays. It was established in 1883. A post office served the community from 1893-1957. Alexander, and later Stoney, also served as Hayston’s only postmasters.

The Hays Store was restored in the 2000s by one the Hays descendants, Freddie Greer.