They tore down the old Elks Club building out on Riverside Drive the other day, and cleared a lot of big trees off a huge lot ... and for a lot of old-time Gainesvillians it brought back a lot of memories. Once upon a time there was a big home on that lot, and that home became a part of the Elks Club building itself, and that was part of what went down.
Anyway, that home belonged to a Mrs. Whelchel (Ed Dunlap called her "Aunt Cap"), and it was a stately house with a widows' walk on the top. It was high enough, located on the hill as it was, that a person could stand on that widows walk platform and see the Chattahoochee River back before there was a lake Lanier, but not before there was a smaller dam on the river that backed up Lake Warner.
Mrs. Whelchel's husband died, and she turned the big home into a boarding house known as Mahomme (spelled, I am told, M-A-H-O-M-M-E) At one time, probably in the 1920's, Mahomme became the residence of choice for Gainesville's leading young bachelors, and a lot of businesses and professional practices founded in this town in the 1920's and 1930's carried the name of men who as younger men had been proud residents of Mahomme.
One other memory kept bobbing up: apparently Mahomme was a boarding house that had great food, provided by a cook who was somewhat of a character named Floyd Teeter. Floyd wore English style riding boots, looking for the world like a World War I cavalryman.
The Elks Club building they tore down the other day had a big room just off the entry, a room adjacent to the bar with a big fireplace and that stone-faced fireplace was one of the few remaining remnants of the old Whelchel house. But that part of the structure, at least, could remember the days when you could step out he front door and catch the street car to ride to downtown Gainesville, even all the way to the Railroad station. From Mahomme through the Elks Club ... there is a lot of history tied up in that plot of land.
This is Gordon Sawyer, from a window on historic Green Street.
Monday
August 4th, 2025
7:53PM
