This Queen Anne cottage is just north of the South Metter Historic District but is perhaps the finest example of the form in town. I’m not sure if the design is from a pattern book or is just the work of a local carpenter, but it’s a great little house.
This Queen Anne cottage is one of the finest works of residential architecture in Glennville, located right in the heart of downtown. The Hughes family was prolific in the area, but I haven’t located much about the Coates family. Cemetery records indicated Charles Marion Coates (1882-1935) and Eula DeLoach Coates (1887-1951) lived in Glennville around the time this house was built.
This is another example of a modified shotgun house, in this case made fancy with Queen Anne elements.
Columbus Historic District, National Register of Historic Places
This house did not originate as an octagon house, but rather as a small cottage built circa 1830, now incorporated into the present structure. Until 1857, it was owned by Alfred Iverson, Sr. (1798-1873), a native of Liberty County and Princeton-trained lawyer who later served in the House of Representatives and the U. S. Senate, and his wife, Julia, the daughter of Georgia governor and future U.S. Secretary of State John Forsyth.
The property was purchased by contractor and cabinetmaker Leander May in 1862. May added the octagonal front to the existing Iverson cottage, and then transformed the original structure into an octagon, creating a double octagon house. Neighbors found it it odd and dubbed it May’s Folly, or simply The Folly. Octagon houses were a short-lived Victorian craze that never fully caught on, making them rare as hens’ teeth today. The rear section was returned to a rectangular form at a later date, but a 1968 fire confirmed that May had made it octagonal, as well.
Though it is often claimed to be the only double octagon house in the nation, there are apparently a few others, depending on how the term is defined. Still, it is an exceedingly rare form, and it’s the only residential property afforded National Historic Landmark status in Columbus.
National Historic Landmark
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.
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.
National Register of Historic Places
This Eastlake-influenced Queen Anne home was built for Joseph Simpson Garrett (1831-1923), a wholesale liquor and tobacco retailer in Columbus who was the patriarch of a family that has been referred to as the “Whiskey Garretts“. Garrett served the Confederacy, ultimately as the commanding colonel of the Seventh Alabama Calvary. As the threat of prohibition and local option sales of alcohol loomed over his business, Garrett and his sons continued their business in Baltimore, with great success. Col. Garrett remained in Columbus, where he was appointed postmaster circa 1899. He sold the house to banker Osborn C. Bullock (1852-1929) in 1910 and moved onto a plantation outside the city. Bullock’s widow, Minnie Drane Bullock (1857-1937) lived here until her death, and their daughter, Margaret Bryan Bullock Schaefer (1900-1985), was the last family member to reside here.
High Uptown Historic District, National Register of Historic Places
When I photographed this circa 1890-1900 winged-gable Queen Anne house in 2013 it was an antique and salvage store, if the assortment of items on the porch is any indication. I never stopped, but I believe it served this purpose for several years. As far as I know, it’s still standing.
This was the home of Henry P. Rimes (1872-1940) and Helen Weaver Rimes (1882-1968). Mr. Rimes was a native of Willie, a vanished town located on what is today Fort Stewart Army Base. He and two of his brothers began a mercantile business in Johnston Station and were already well-established when the community was renamed Ludowici. He also served on the city council and was a steward of the Ludowici Methodist Church.
This Queen Anne townhouse was built by J. B. Pound in 1893. Identifying J. B. Pound is more difficult than dating the house. There’s a J. P. Pound buried in Memory Hill with no birth or death dates given on the headstone, but I think J. B. Pound was more likely Jerome Balaam Pound (1863-1952). Pound was a native of Dooly County who went on to become a prominent newspaper publisher and hotelier. He owned the DeSoto Hotel in Savannah, as well as two hotels on Tybee Island, the Hotel Seminole in Jacksonville, and the Hotel Patten in Chattanooga. He began his work in newspapers as a printer in Macon in 1887, and by 1888 had launched a newspaper in Chattanooga. Considering his Georgia connections, having a home in Milledgeville in 1893 doesn’t seem far-fetched, though certainly bears further research. Whatever the case, his association with the property was short-lived. He spent most of his life in Knoxville and Miami Beach.
Edgar Jefferson Flemister (1858-1930) and Ida Callaway Flemister (1858-1936) purchased the home circa 1902 and it remained in the family until 1993. I believe the name “Buena Vista” was assigned the house to honor the wife of owner Malcolm McKay Flemister (1890-1960), Buena Vista Barrett Flemister (1893-1992).
Milledgeville Historic District, National Register of Historic Places