Designed by Otis Clay Poundstone and built by the W. P. A. as the Cedartown City Hall, this has also housed the police and fire departments and city auditorium. Today, it sits adjacent to Polk County’s main courthouse [built in 1951] and serves as an annex.
Cedartown Commercial Historic District, National Register of Historic Places
This historic New Deal post office was saved and is now home to the Cook County Historical Society Museum. Mary A. King writes: My father, James S. Bailey, was in charge of some of the W.P.A. projects at that time and I know some of the work in Cook County was his, and I believe he was in charge of the construction of the post office, too. I seem to remember having seen photos of the construction process and hearing my parents talk about it, but I wasn’t born until 1941, just before the war started and that changed a lot of things, of course. He was doing W.P.A. projects around Ashburn and Sycamore when I was born because I was born in Sycamore and our home was Nashville in Berrien County.
National Register of Historic Places
For generations of Ben Hill Countians, Lynwood School, or the “County School”, was a second home where memories of childhood still play out in its oiled wooden floors and back lot concession stand.
The history of the school is first documented in M. L Duggan’s 1918 Educational Survey of Ben Hill County [photograph above]. At that time, it was a two-story granitoid structure noted as a “consolidation of three small schools”. This leads me to believe it dates to the 1910s, contemporary with the documentation in Duggan’s work. My grandfather attended Lynwood around 1920-1923. I attended from first through seventh grade and remember the best school and the best teachers. I also remember Sno-Cones and Fruit Chews at the concession stand and doing jumping jacks at P. E. with Mr. Thomas. I remember recesses picking up pine cones on the hill. I think everyone remembers their first grade teacher and mine was Kay Batton who was a wonderful influence on a young mind. I remember the mock presidential election in Mrs. Bryant’s 4th grade class (1980) in which some of us got to be the candidates in a mock debate. It was a valuable lesson in democracy at work. And Pam Pusey’s sixth-grade English when a friend and I wrote a play and got to perform it on stage in the auditorium. I could list them all because I remember them. That’s just the kind of place Lynwood was.
The present structure was a public works project of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal and I’ve heard that its demolition is imminent. That being said, I find it a sad commentary that communities can’t recognize the value of places like this. On one hand in the South we embrace the past in our politics but want it gone in other facets of our lives.
Tim Anderson wrote a great editorial on the subject of the school’s future a few years ago in the Herald-Leader. He said, in part: There are many in our community who were students at Lynnwood. We lost our beautiful old high school to fire. It would be a shame not to find a use for this old school building. It would make a fine central office for the school system — one more closely situated to most students. The 300-seat auditorium and spacious classrooms cry out for thoughtful solutions, like an adequate school board meeting room. We realize that solution may not be a priority for the school board at this time. But it’s a question waiting for an answer… This sums it up, and the school office idea has already been done in another South Georgia county. The old Black Creek Elementary School in Bryan County faced a similar fate and has been beautifully refurbished for service as the board office.
Like most of the surviving Irwinville Farms houses, this one has been expanded and modified, but it’s still a great example.
The cornerstone notes that Louis A. Simon was the Supervising Architect and Neal A. Melick was the Supervising Engineer. All the WPA/New Deal post offices have a similar appearance but for some reason this is one of my favorites. A 1941 oil on canvas work by Abraham Harriton entitled “Plantation, Transportation, Education” was interestingly removed from the facility in 1987 on orders of the then-postmaster to a visitors center at the Old Mill in Augusta. I don’t know if is still there or if it’s been returned.
A photograph of the painting by Jimmy Emerson, who has tirelessly documented these for years, can be seen here.
This is one of the strangest but most heartwarming monuments you will see in Georgia.
On this spot in 1933 during the Great Depression neighbors of a farmer named Bartow Barron joined together to rescue his pig from a dry well. This monument is erected to the spirit of friendship and community so characteristic of those times.
Donors listed on the monument: Reynolds Allen, Beegee Baugh, John Burkey, Suzanne Caskey, Chris Chandler, Beaufort Cranford, Ruth Cranford, Nancy Culberson, Lee Dickens, May Donnelly, Charles W. Ennis, Noel Fowler, Floride Gardner, Emily Garner, Don Hartsfield, Myralyn Hartsfield, Goat Helton, Francis Ross Hicks, Cecil Hodges, Mary Holt, Martha Johnson, Maxa Osterman, Brenda Phillips, Rubye C. Pittman, Wesley Pittman, Randolph Puckett, Gus Pursley, Leon Thigpen, Catherine Everett Thurston, Elizabeth Tinley, and Harriett Wright.
I’m not sure when the monument was erected, but I would guess the mid-1990s. I believe a poem about this incident was published by Harold A. Martin in his book Southland and Other Poems of the South [Cherokee Publishing, 1992], which is referenced at the bottom of the marker.
Better known as the home of J. E. Beck & Son Hardware (established 1945), the building was built by a Mr. Shannon in 1920. In the distance is the old WPA-built city gymnasium. According to Billy Humphries, it will soon be restored and used as a a theater/opry house. Jean Clements also notes that for a time after the Jeffersonville school building burned in the late 1940s, it was used as the temporary grammar school.
This Irwinville Farms Health Clinic was built to provide medical care for the people of the Irwinville Farms project. Dr. Herman Dismuke was the administrator at the clinic and was a well-loved area physician for many years thereafter. It has served as a home for many years. The vintage photograph depicts Irwinville Farms clients inside this building.
Built to replace the original St. George School [1910] which was destroyed by fire, St. George Elementary is the southernmost school in Georgia.
Designed by Dennis & Dennis, this courthouse is likely a New Deal construction.
National Register of Historic Places