The Story Located on Main Street, the A.J. Gillen Department Store was built in 1907 when Maxeys was a booming cotton town. This upscale store boasted the only elevator in the county and an intricate, wrought iron staircase lit by an overhead skylight. The store featured everything a fine department store could offer, including men’s […]

The Story Bibb City Elementary School was constructed in 1915 by the Bibb Manufacturing Company for the children of its employees. It was later brought into the public school system, which later became the consolidated city-county school system of Columbus-Muscogee County. Bibb City is a former company-owned mill village which developed, as many did in […]

The Story Built in 1895, the Cuthbert Water Tower is the only known water tower in the center of a federal highway, Highway 82. Walsh and Weidner of Chattanooga, Tennessee, built the Water Tower for the City of Cuthbert Water Works. It was engineered by M. F. Sullivan, and the contractors were Felton and Lyttle. […]

The Story A volunteer fire department was established in Rome in 1850, followed shortly by other competing fire departments. In 1908, the departments became consolidated and in 1927, Fire Station No. 2 opened its doors at 504 S. Broad Street. It is Rome’s second oldest fire station and one of South Rome’s last standing historic […]

The Story The Central of Georgia Railroad erected the current brick freight depot in 1871 following the design for a number of postbellum depot facilities referred to as American Railroad Style. The design features elements such as deep, overhanging eaves, round-arched service doors and paired and carved brackets. For more than a century, the Fort […]

The Story This historically significant house is a major contributing building to Madison’s National Register Historic District and an outstanding example of the Aesthetic Movement in the South. From 1882-1883, Legare H. Foster built the house on the foundation of the former Georgia Female College which closed in 1880. In 1889, the Fosters sold the […]

The Story The Kit Jones is a 60-foot wood-hull tugboat built on Sapelo Island in 1938-1939 by island owner and tobacco company heir R.J. Reynolds, Jr. The vessel was named for Katharine Talbott Jones, the wife of Alfred W. Jones, friends of Reynolds. After being decommissioned as a U.S. Coast Guard fireboat during World War […]

The Story Designed in 1929 by noted Atlanta architects A. Ten Eyck Brown and Alfredo Barili, Jr., the National Library Bindery Company was the Southeast’s first library bindery and is one of the oldest remaining structures on Peachtree Road. Today the building is home to Peachtree Battle Antiques. The Threat The building had been threatened […]

The Story At the turn of the 20th century, renowned landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, most known for designing NYC’s Central Park, laid out Atlanta’s Druid Hills neighborhood and adjoining linear park with his sons. Although the houses in Atlanta’s Druid Hills Historic District are protected because they are in a locally designated landmark district, […]

The Story As Georgia’s oldest European-settled city, Savannah’s array of underground archaeological sites is vast and diverse. These archaeological sites are a bank of unique and irreplaceable historical information about Savannah’s history and they have the potential to not only expand the history of the past but tell the stories of those silent in historical […]