flea | Spring project part 2: Historic Architecture in Athens

Historic Architecture in Athens and the South

Athens Clarke Heritage Foundation (http://www.achfonline.org/)

Charlotte Thomas Marshall, Historic Houses of Athens. (Athens Historical Society, Athens, GA, 1987).

Paul Oliver, ed., Encyclopedia of Vernacular Architecture of the World, (Cambridge University Press, New York, NY, 1997), Section 3.VI.6: North America: United States: South.

Carl R. Lounsbury, An Illustrated Glossary of Early Southern Architecture and Landscape. (Oxford University Press, New York, 1994).

Tom Spector, Guide to the Architecture of Georgia. (University of South Carolina Press, Columbia, SC, 1993).

Athens Georgia was named, self-consciously, after Athens Greece - a fitting name for a town founded as the site of the state university, especially in a time and place, Federal America, which was deeply interested in the classical past and in many ways deliberately modeled itself on it. While early Athens was a frontier area, by the late antebellum period it had become more prosperous, and there are a large number of impressive houses in Athens dating from the 1830s down to the Victorian period. Today there are three white-columned classical mansions in the Greek revival style within 5 minutes' walk of my house; at the time of their construction these were in a suburb of Athens proper.

Marshall's short volume describes 25 local houses of historic interest, in 2-3 pages each. More discussion is focused on the history of the houses and their inhabitants – usually prominent citizens – than the architectural character of the house; photographs are included. The houses date from the early 19th to the early 20th century, and are all either very old, or large and impressive (usually both). Occasionally a rather unexciting house is included because of the importance of its inhabitants. It is amusing to note that a large number of the historic houses of Athens are currently in use as fraternity houses: from one elite group to another!

Spector's book is also a slender one; is a sort of tour guide for the architectural enthusiast traveling in Georgia. It includes 6-8 towns and cities for each of several regions of the state, and for each town a number of local buildings of interest are described. There is historical description as well as architectural history. Maps of each town are included and there are illustrations of many of the buildings. Athens warrants 8 “buildings” (one of which is the entire North Campus of UGA). I included this to place Athens's historic architecture within the context of Georgia as a whole; Athens is actually very similar in some ways to other towns of its age and size.

Of course, not all Athenians, Georgians, or Southerners - not even most of them - lived in large mansions. To counteract this bias in sources about historical architecture, I looked to the Encyclopedia of Vernacular Architecture of the World. The section on the American South is made up of many very short vignettes describing sub-regional styles of note, associated with places (Charleston, Piedmont South) or population groups (Moravian, Cajun, Scotch-Irish, African-American). Native American vernacular architecture is not covered. The vernacular architecture of the south in general is described as wood-dominated, and tending to follow English West Country forms, as a result of immigration from that region. Special features of vernacular architecture related to the southern climate include houses that are one room deep, have high ceilings, deep porches, pitched roofs, and raised floors or foundations: all of these features help with cooling in hot weather in the absence of air conditioning. My own historic Athens house, a one-story bungalow or “pyramid house” built in the 1920s, is much more in keeping with the vernacular tradition!

I included Lounsbury's dictionary of architectural and other terms related to domestic spaces (i.e. yard), because in writing about architecture, whose effect is primarily visual, the appropriate vocabulary is so vital. This book has plentiful illustrations and includes quotations from original historical sources using given words, making it useful when trying to decipher contemporary descriptions of houses or spaces. The focus is on the 17th and 18th centuries.