Historic Structures

Thomas Point Shoals Light Station, Annapolis Maryland

Resigned by staff professionals of the U.S. Lighthouse Service, Thomas Point Lighthouse is the last of the manned screwpile, off-shore lights on the Chesapeake Bay. The principle of the screwpile design was first introduced in England in 1838 and later used in the United States in 1854. This method of anchoring a lighthouse was simple, effective, inexpensive and most appropriate for the sandy and muddy bottom of the Chesapeake Bay. Constructed in 1875 the structure remains virtually intact. The splat baluster railings, the shaped dormer rafter projections and the steel octagonal cupola (bearing the inscription Atlantic Steam Engine Works, Brooklyn, New York, 1875) are architectural features of interest.

Hillsboro Inlet Light Station, Pompano Beach Florida

The Hillsboro Light, which marks the northern limit of the Florida Reef, has long been a welcomed navigation sight to seafarers traveling along the Atlantic Ocean. This 132 foot beacon has cast the brightest light of any lighthouse in Florida throughout most of the 20th century. Light structure and complex have a unique history and have been well-preserved. The Hillsboro Light was assembled by a Chicago steel firm for exihibition at the 1904 great St. Louis Exposition; the light was made in Paris, France in 1880 and is of the Second Order Classical type. At the end of the exposition the United States government bought the light and its tower and the structure was disassembled and shipped to its present site. The Hillsboro Inlet site was purchased by the federal government on November 9, 1903. The U.S. Lighthouse Service contracted George W. Brown of West Palm Beach to build the keeper's dwelling and other buildings for $21,500 in 1905. Russell Wheel and Foundry of Detroit, Michigan contracted to complete the metal work on the tower for $24,000 and in January, 1906 the J.H. Gardner Construction Company of New Orleans, contracted to erect the tower and foundation. The light went into operation in March, 1907 with Alfred A. Berghell as its first keeper.

Crooked River Lighthouse, Carrabelle Florida

The increase in lumber trade from the Apalachicola River to Crooked River, southwest of Carrabelle, convinced the Lighthouse Board in 1888 to ask for a mainland light to replace the Dog Island Lighthouse, destroyed in 1873. The deep river entrance, 18 feet deep at the bar, was considered an asset and the Board predicted a fairly large port there.

Sanibel Lighthouse, Sanibel Florida

In 1832, a group of investors known as the Florida Peninsular Land Company sponsored the exploration of a portion of the Gulf Coast of Florida for the purpose of selecting a site for a permanent settlement. By the end of the year, Sanibel Island had been selected as the best location for a colony, and in 1833, a small group of settlers arrived from New York. This early settlement was not long lived (within five years, the island was nearly deserted and remained so for about twenty-five years), but the initial colonists were active in trying to develop the area. In December, 1833, thirteen residents of Sanibel Island petitioned the U. S. Treasury Department for the construction of a lighthouse on the island. However, the national government showed no interest in the idea at that time. In December, 1856, the General Land Office received a request for the creation of a reservation of land for the purpose of establishing a lighthouse on Sanibel Island. No action was taken until the request was repeated in December, 1877. By that time, seagoing commerce in the area had reached important proportions. The General Land Office acted favorably and within two weeks, Sanibel Island was closed to private ownership.

Boca Grande Lighthouse Gasparilla Island, Boca Grande Florida

The Boca Grande Lighthouse derives its primary significance from its opening of the Boca Grande Harbor for large phosphate shipments. The lighthouse was completed in September, 1890, and activated on December 31, 1890. Presumably, the assistant keeper's quarters were constructed at the same time. The design reflects the fact that the light did not require as much elevation that is seen in other Florida lighthouses due to its serving as a harbor beacon as opposed to outer maritime traffic. New phosphate discoveries in west central Florida and advanced mining techniques developed in the 1880's demanded a port capable of handling the increased volume of seagoing traffic. During the 1890's phosphate mined in the Peace River area was brought out to deep water in lighters and barges where it was transferred to ocean-going vessels. This necessitated the building of the Boca Grande Lighthouse; a quay, known as the State Quarantine Dock; and the installation of a customs office to inspect the incoming vessels arriving to load the phosphate.

New Albany Hotel, Albany Georgia

The New Albany Hotel was one of two major hotels built in Albany during the 1920's. By this time Albany had become the hub of railroad transportation in southwest Georgia, serviced by seven rail lines and over thirty-five trains daily. It was a regional trade center, and these first-class hotels were built to accommodate the tourists, business people and traveling salespeople whose presence in town was stimulated by the railroads. The hotel was a major downtown commercial venture. It was completed in 1925 shortly after the elegant Hotel Gordon opened nearby on Pine Avenue, next to the county courthouse. A hotel had been located on the New Albany Hotel site since before 1886. The owners of the then wood frame New Albany Hotel, spurred on by the competition, determined to build an equally modern and elegant facility. The westerm portion of the old hotel was torn down (the eastern portion remained standing, adjacent to the present building, for many years) and was replaced with the new structure. It featured tubs and shower baths, telephones in every room, hot and cold water and the finest furnishings and other modern conveniences. The hotel also housed several local businesses including offices, shops and restaurants. The cost of the building, $425,000, was the largest amount issued in an Albany building permit during 1925. The hotel was an instant success. With its large restaurant and ballroom it bacame an important center of social life in Albany during the 1920's and 1930's. Sunday dinner in its dining room was an Albany tradition for many years while it remained an elegant hostelry.

Albany Municipal Auditorium, Albany Georgia

The Municipal Auditorium in downtown Albany, Georgia, built c.1915 to replace an older wooden building that housed the Chataqua Society activities, was designed by A. Ten Eyck Brown, a well known Atlanta architect. The need for a new auditorium in the early 1900's grew out of the many activities of the Chataqua Society of Albany, Georgia. This Society was founded by Dr. N. A. Duncan of Syracuse, New York, the secretary of the New York Society, who bought a plantation near Albany, Georgia, in 1888. The Society was designed to provide an informal method of education for people who had little formal education. After the movement officially ended during World War I, the auditorium continued to be used for Chataque type events. The large stage of the auditorium was considered one of the best in the South during the early twentieth century. Many celebrities appeared on this stage, Sara Bernhardt, Maud Adams, David Warrick, and Henry Ford among others. Such musical events as the Al G. Fields Minstrels, Sousa's Band, and many Broadway plays attracted audiences from all over South Georgia to the Albany Auditorium. The building was also used for home talent shows, concerts by local musicians high school graduations, and events of Albany State College and Albany Junior College.

Davis House - Albany Little Theatre, Albany Georgia

The home was built around 1853 by Martha Ryals, who transferred ownership to her son, Newton P. Brinson, in 1857. He was in his early twenties and a dry-goods merchant in the firm of Beers and Brinson. Shortly after the Civil War, he sold the house to John A. Davis. Davis (1832-1905) was a Georgia native who moved to southwest Georgia with his parents. After moving to Albany to practice law, he married, in 1851, Laura C. Hampton, and they raised eight children. He was a man of rich influence in the financial, religious, educational and entertainment fields of Albany and in the state. He had served with the Commissary Department of the Confederate States of America. After serving as local counsel for the Central of Georgia Railroad, he organized the First National Bank of Albany in 1886 and was its first president. He represented the county in the constitutional convention of 1887 and was chairman of the Executive Committee of the Georgia Bankers Association, beginning at its organization in 1891. Davis was known as the Nestor of Georgia Bankers.

Bridge House - Tifts Hall, Albany Georgia

The Classical-Italianate style Bridge House, built circa 1857 is significant as the only known extant bridge house in Georgia. Once a center of Albany, economically and socially, with its theater - ballroom above the busy agricultural bridge traffic below, the Bridge House now houses the Keenan Auto Parts Company. The Bridge House was built as a result of a dispute between Colonel Nelson Tift and the Baker County Commissioners over the building of Albany's first bridge over the Flint River. Before this bridge was built, travel across the Flint River from Albany was hampered by the use of a hand operated ferry. Colonel Tift, the owner of the ferry, had wanted the County Commissioners to build a bridge on this spot for the town. When they refused to dc so, Tift hired Horace King, a well known black bridge builder of Georgia, to build a bridge that he could run as a business. The Bridge House was built at the same time as a bridge with a tunnel through its ground floor as a collection point for tolls on wagons and horses using the bridge. The charging of a toll was one of Tift's methods of recouping the large sum of money that he had spent in building the bridge and the Bridge House. The citizens of Albany were pleased to finally have a bridge and gladly paid the toll at first; however, the toll soon became a burden. This resentment against Tift and the bridge may have led directly to the burning of the first bridge several years after it was built. A second bridge was soon built on the foundations of the first one and sold to the county for $20,000. However, Tift still owned the land at either end of the bridge and the Bridge House.

US Post Office, Adel Georgia

In 1889, the city of Adel, the county seat of Cook County in south Georgia, was incorporated. The first Adel post office had been established 10 years earlier, and Joel J. Parish, the first postmaster in Adel, selected its name from the center portion of the name Philadelphia. Cook County was named for Phil Cook, a former Secretary of State, and was created from Berrien County in 1918. Cook County encompasses 226 miles and is located approximately halfway between Macon, Georgia, and Jacksonville, Florida.

SOWEGA - Watermelon Building, Adel Georgia

The South West Georgia (SOWEGA) Watermelon Growers Association, a major regional marketing cooperative organized in 1921 to enable farmers to obtain the highest prices for their products. It was formed due to marketing needs for the non-essential, but ever popular, watermelons. The watermelon logo/trademark, found on the building, and all their official publications, was also placed on all the watermelons shipped. The cooperative also published a newspaper, The SOWEGA Standard, in this building.

Bastrop High School, Bastrop Louisiana

The parish seat of Bastrop was founded when Morehouse Parish was created in 1844. It retained village status until 1909, when there was sufficient population to be designated a town, although still less than one thousand. This was to change, however, in the 1920s when the population exploded, due largely to the arrival of two huge paper mills (Bastrop Pulp and Paper in 1920 and Louisiana Pulp and Paper in 1925, both by 1927 part of International Paper and expanded). A small farming community rather suddenly became an industrial center, as the population more than quadrupled (from 1,216 in 1920 to 5,121 in 1930). Population continued to increase, although not as dramatically, in the 1930s. The figure for 1940 is 6,626.

Leland College, Baker Louisiana

Leland College (originally Leland University) had a far-reaching impact upon the education of Louisiana african americans. It was one of four institutions of higher learning for blacks chartered in the state either during or shortly after Reconstruction. The other three were Southern University (1880), Straight University (1869), and New Orleans University (1873). Southern began in New Orleans and moved to Baton Rouge in 1914, while the latter two were in New Orleans for their entire existence. In 1935 they merged to form Dillard University. It should be noted that although all of these institutions were called universities and are thought of as such, none of them during the period under consideration (1870-1930) had more than a small percentage of students enrolled in what could be considered college level courses. The vast majority of their enrollees were elementary and secondary students. In addition to these four schools, there were two black institutions of higher learning which have their roots in the early twentieth century. Xavier University began at the old Southern campus in New Orleans and purchased its present site in June of 1929. Present-day Grambling University began as a private industrial school on the elementary and secondary levels. It did not begin to award college degrees until 1944.

Kent Plantation, Alexandria Louisiana

The structure was the second house built by Pierre Baillio II between 1796 and 1800. Records indicate that his father, Pierre I, was a native of France and a soldier in the King f s Army at Natchitoches, where he married in 1743. Pierre II was his eldest son. Young Pierre moved to Point Coupee Parish and at the age of 18 married Magdelain Emelie LaCour in 1791. The wedding is recorded in St. Ann's Catholic Church at Morganza. The couple moved to Rapides Parish about 1793 or 1794. In 1794 he was given a land grant of 501 acres north of the present Alexandria and later received five additional land grants for himself and his children totaling approximately 1741 acres. The land grant which apparently covers the site of Kent House is dated 1795, was signed by Baron de Carondelet and is on display at Louisiana State University at Alexandria. Pierre II built one house, then prior to 1800, started another which is the present Kent House. Family tradition relates that Pierre started his slaves on construction of the foundation and left for New Orleans to purchase furnishings. His was delayed, and upon his tardy return, he found the work still continuing. This resulted in the house being unusually high off the ground, but with the local flooding characteristics, it was just as well. This occurred some 12 years before Alexander Fulton was to lay out the town of Alexandria, then known as El Rapide. The house was built from the land itself—clay for the rose colored brick, huge handhewn cypress trunks for the beams, pillars and floors, and deer hair and mud for the bouzillage walls. Construction was by slaves belonging to Pierre. The deep, wide windows were designed with the possibility of fighting hostile Indians in mind. Pierre II died in 1824 and his wife in 1838. They are buried, side by side, in the old and historic Rapides Cemetery across the Red River on the high ground of Pineville.

Arcadia Railroad Depot, Arcadia Louisiana

The Vicksburg, Shreveport and Pacific Railroad Depot (1910) is a single story board and batten building located on the railroad corridor of downtown Arcadia. Although there were a few railroad lines constructed in Louisiana prior to the Civil War, railroading did not begin in earnest until about 1880. For example, by 1860 only 335 miles of track had been laid, and by 1880 that figure had not even doubled. But between 1880 and 1910 over 4,000 miles of track were laid. These were the boom years of Louisiana railroading, a period during which railroads competed with, and generally defeated, older forms of transportation such as steamboats. In many ways the railroad remade the state. In choosing major outlines of their routes, railroad officials were governed not by existing settlement patterns, but by their overall plan for continental development. Many new towns were created as a result of railroad expansion. Examples include Crowley, DeRidder, Eunice, and Many, to name just a few. In addition, there were cases like Arcadia where existing towns relocated to be near the railroad. Moreover, it is certain that the rice boom and the lumber boom, which were so important to the economy of Louisiana, would not have been possible without a well developed railroad network. In the late nineteenth century railroads were as much desired as interstate highways were in the mid-twentieth century. Every small town Chamber of Commerce waited for the great day when the railroad would come. Those towns which were bypassed by the railroad ceased to thrive and ultimately became economic backwaters with small populations.

Bentley Hotel, Alexandria Louisiana

The Bentley Hotel was built in 1907-1908 by Joseph A. Bentley, a prominent citizen of Alexandria who in the course of his life was a banker, lumberman, and philanthropist as well as hotel owner. The building's architect was George R. Mann and his assistant was J.L. Howard. Their firm was based in Little Rock, Arkansas. The contractor was Hull Construction Company of Jackson, Mississippi, and the construction crew was under the supervision of D.H. Shenk. The cost of construction was $750,000, including the furnishings. In addition to its association with Bentley, who is almost a legendary figure in Alexandria history, the hotel also has associations with some important figures of World War II. During the war there were several military installations in the area, and according to the reminiscences of a longtime employee, among the famous soldiers who stayed at the hotel were General Omar Bradley and Colonel Dwight Eisenhower. Other guests were Huey Long, Gary Grant, and John Wayne.

Gaineswood Mansion, Demopolis Alabama

Gaineswood has been acclaimed by numerous authorities as one of the most impressive homes in America. We regard Gaineswood as one of the most significant and important houses of its period for the history of American architecture in the entire United States, according to a letter from Denys Peter Myers, acting chief of the Division of Historic Architecture, United States Department of the Interior, to the governor of Alabama on July 9, 1970. Gaineswood was begun in 1842 but not completed until 1860, and therein lies the reason for much of its charm. The builder, Nathan Bryan Whitfield served as his own architect, keeping, up with the latest in architectural styles. As he concentrated on completing one remarkable room after another, the stylistic preference in America shifted from Greek to Renaissance Revival or the Italianate. The balustrades and picturesque massing of Gaineswood are to be attributed to this later vogue.

Washington School - New Fifth Ward School, Appleton Wisconsin

As a product of 1890's large-scale school construction, the Washington School is bolder and more elegant, rare expressive of Richardsonian Romanesque period influences than other comparable schools in Appleton. The Lincoln School, Columbus School, and St. Joseph School, all designed in the same decade, are less lively in form and less coloristically rich. Broken into larger parts, the Washington School is more strongly reminiscent of libraries and academic buildings designed by master H. H. Richardson. Its irregular silhouette speaks more forcefully of the late Victorian era. Contrast with later schools, like the Collegiate Gothic Roosevelt Jr. High School, strengthens the significance of the Washington School as the preeminent interpretation of Richardsonian form in Appleton. Frank Shaver Alien lived in Joliet, Illinois, when commissioned to design the school building. His work has been identified throughout the Midwest and southern California, yet the most representative examples of his work are in the Joliet area. Alien's work shows his familiarity with Richardsonian principles. His more representative commissions include the Barber Building, Central High School, and his former residence, all in Joliet. Alien was selected by the school board to design Washington School to replace the original Washington School, which was located adjacent to the site. The original school was considered too small for Appleton's expanding school population. It should be noted that classes were held in the original school up to a week prior to opening of the new school. At that time a fire, believed to be arson, consumed the original school.

Bothwell House, Ashville Alabama

The house was constructed in 1835 for James J. Bothwell who came to Ashville in 1834. Until that time, Ashville had only one doctor, Dr. Charles C. P. Farrar. In addition to his other services, Bothwell was a charter member of Cataula Masonic Lodge. In 1852, shortly before his death, he hired Richard Crow, a local builder to add a kitchen and dining wing to his house. On his death in 1854, his widow, Ellen Bothwell obtained a license to operate a tavern in her home. In 1857, she sold all her holdings in Ashville and moved to Tishamingo County, Mississippi. Her cousin, Peyton Roway, purchased the home and several years later sold it to W. T. Hodges. In 1880, Judge Leroy F. Box purchased the home which he presented to his daughter Lula on the occassion of her marriage to James A Embry, a local attorney. The Embrys had twelve childern, which necessitated additions to the house. In 1978, a grandson of the Embrys sold the house to Dr. Lamar M and Rebecca Campbell. The Bothwell-Embry House is a two-story, wood frame, three-bay wide Federal house with exterior chimneys at the gable ends, and a central two-story columned portico. The portico has four two-story fluted Doric wood columns and a second story balustered balcony, topped by a pedimented gable. Two pilasters frame the first and second floor doorways to the portico, and two more form the front corners of the house. The two-panel doors both have sidelights and transoms. Two rear wings were added to the original section of the house; one for a dining room, kitchen, and upstairs bedroom, and a second for two bedrooms. The area between the wings was enclosed for a ball and sun room. A rear porch was also added. The roof has been modified from a gable to a hip to accommodate the additions. The house is sheathed in hand-sawn clapboards, and is constructed of large pegged timbers. The floor joists are notched and fitted, and are of hand-hewn heart pine. There is a basement with 5'6 headroom.

Rogers House - Hearth Stone, Appleton Wisconsin

Hearthstone is interesting architecturally as an example of a fine Queen Anne house still in excellent condition. The hand-crafted interior woodwork as well as the fine stained-glass, Minton tiles, and antique furniture make it important for Victorian decorative arts as well. A further significance of Hearth Stone is historical. It was built by Henry J. Rogers an industrialist who had come to Appleton from the East. Rogers wife missed the social life of her native Baltimore, and Rogers is said to have built Hearth Stone to provide her with elegant surroundings which would reconcile her to life in the West. Rogers was a friend of H.E. Jacobs who, in 1882 had taken a job with Thomas Edison, Jacobs convinced Rogers that electricity was the wave of the future, and Rogers devised a scheme to light Hearth Stone, the Vulcan Paper Mill, and the Appleton Paper and Pulp Mill electrically. A generator was purchased from Thomas Edison, and Rogers and three other men founded the Appleton Edison Light Company, Ltd., using the Fox River as their source of power. On September 30, 1882, Hearth Stone was illuminated electrically for the first time. This first operation of the Appleton plant followed the opening of Thomas Edison's steam operated Pearl Street Station by only twenty-six days; and Edison's plant was not originally used to light any buildings used solely for residential purposes, though it did light some houses associated with industrial purposes. Thus, Hearth Stone was the first residence in America to be lighted from a centrally-located power plant.

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