Two Habersham buildings placed on National Register

UNDATED - Two buildings in Habersham County - one dating to the 1880s - were recently listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

One is the home of the Demorest Women's Club - the former Demorest Methodist Church building that the club bought in 1954. The other - the one that goes back to the 19th century - is the Lawton Place in Mount Airy, which was once the home of baseball Hall-of-Famer Ty Cobb.

LAWTON PLACE

The Lawton Place was listed in the National Register on January 8, 2009. The property owner sponsored the nomination and a consultant prepared the nomination materials.

During Reconstruction in the 1870s, railroad companies began speculating in real estate as a way to raise revenue for the railroads. A consortium of Northern railroad investors who envisioned "a delightful summer resort" established Mount Airy in northeast Georgia along the Atlanta and Richmond Railroad line in 1872.

General Alexander Robert Lawton of Savannah was an early investor in Mount Airy. The Railroad Avenue lot where Lawton built his home was one of numerous parcels he purchased there. Following Lawton's death in 1896, the house passed to a succession of owners. By 1925 it served as rental property.

Its most famous tenant was baseball legend Ty Cobb, who rented the house in the late 1950s when his own house was under construction. In a letter to a friend in 1957, Cobb wrote, "Have a fine old house here, rented, antiques, etc., to live in until my home completed. Friends and all the people are so fine and helpful to me."

The Lawton Place is significant in the area of exploration and settlement and entertainment/recreation because it represents the earliest period of development of Mount Airy as a summer resort. Many residents were seasonal residents only, escaping the heat and yellow fever epidemics of cities such as Savannah.

The house is also significant in architecture because it is a variant of the Georgian-plan house type adapted for use in a north Georgia resort community. Georgian-plan houses were built throughout the state from the 18th century to the early 20th century.

The Lawton Place is a large, two-story, Georgian-plan house that was constructed in 1884-1885 by General Lawton. The wood-frame house is clad in weatherboard and features a two-story portico, supported by four colossal Doric columns, which spans the width of the main façade.

The eclectic architectural style of the house reflects its late 19th-century date of construction with elements of the Greek Revival style in the portico and door surrounds, Gothic Revival-style louvered attic vents, and Stick-style bargeboard trim in the gable ends. In the 1950s, a two-story addition with bathrooms and dressing rooms was added to the northeast side. The two historic outbuildings associated with the main house are an early 20th-century Craftsman-style tenant house and a wood privy.

THE DEMOREST WOMEN'S CLUB

The Demorest Woman's Club was listed in the National Register on December 30, 2008. The property owner sponsored the nomination and the preservation planner for the Georgia Mountains Regional Development Center prepared the nomination materials.

The Demorest Woman's Club was founded in 1934 by a group of eleven women who first met in members' homes. Later that year the club was officially federated and 51 additional members joined. In 1954 the club purchased the Demorest Methodist Church building from its trustees for one dollar, and immediately began renovations to the building. The Men's Civic Club had previously refused to accept the building, because they thought it was too dilapidated, but the women persevered and managed to adapt the building to their needs.

The Demorest Woman's Club is significant in women's history for its associations with the women's club movement of Georgia. According to Georgia: A Woman's Place, A Historic Context, the 1920s saw the beginnings of many clubhouses for women in small towns and cities, whereas previously these groups had not had organizational homes.

Women's groups had supported philanthropic causes for many years, but having their own building enabled the clubs to house administrative records, accommodate larger meetings, and serve as a community focal point. As with other women's clubs, the activities of the Demorest Woman's Club were extremely beneficial to the entire community.

Today, the Demorest Woman's Club continues to uphold its traditions. A recent letter written by the mayor of Demorest states, "the Woman's Club has made its presence known in many positive ways throughout the last sixty years. This has been accomplished by actively sponsoring community oriented projects, encouraging study, participation in, and the enjoyment of the Arts, and annually participating in charitable endeavors."

The clubhouse is readily available throughout the year to host numerous community groups such as the Demorest Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts, the Habersham Community Theatre and Piedmont College. The members of the Demorest Woman's Club firmly believe that their clubhouse is an integral part of the downtown Demorest streetscape and remains an important part of the community's history.

The Demorest Woman's Club is located in downtown Demorest, immediately adjacent to and across from Piedmont College's campus. The wood-frame gable-front building is one story in height in the front and two stories in the rear, due to the extreme slope of the land and the raised roadbed. Constructed in 1902 for the Methodist Episcopal Church, the building was significantly altered after acquisition by the Demorest Woman's Club in 1954, and therefore the significance of the property relates to its later use.

ABOUT THE NATONAL REGISTER:

The National Register is the federal government's official list of historic buildings, structures, sites, objects, and districts worthy of preservation. According to Richard Cloues, deputy state historic preservation officer, listing in the National Register recognizes a property's significance and ensures that the property will be taken into account in the planning of federally funded or licensed projects. In addition, owners of National Register properties may be eligible for rehabilitation tax incentives.