Fitts & Patterson Store, c.1928, Pickens County, GA

Photographer facing north

Driving on Hwy 53 between the communities of Marble Hill and Tate, in Pickens County, GA, this building commands your attention as it white color leaps out at you. This section of Hwy in northern Georgia, on the southern side of the Blue Ridge Mountains, is a stretch that passes two or three marble quarries that, when viewed on satellite images, appear as white as this building.

Pickens County is known as "The Marble Capital of Georgia", with mined materials used for a variety of purposes. The Pickens County Marble Festival website states:

               "For decades Georgia Marble has been mined and used to create historic architecture around the world, including the Archives Building in Atlanta, the New York Stock Exchange, the Supreme Court, the Lincoln Memorial, and our local Tate Elementary School. The marble is also used for tombstones for the United States Military at Arlington National Cemetery. Most of the marble is white, but there is also a very rare pink marble. It is one of the few places in the world where pink marble is found".

Photographer facing NE

Thjs structure is located right across the highway from part of the Imerys Marble operation. I don't know what the exact nature of the store has been through the years, but there is a "Drink Royal Crown Cola, Best By Taste Test" sign painted, barely discernible, on the western side of the building.

Many stores of that era that were build near a manufacturing operation were company stores, set up for the workers to buy goods, thus giving their money right back to their employers. Some companies went so far as paying their employees, not in U.S. dollars, but company money that could only be spent at the company store. Whether that practice was used here is not known to me.

One would have to assume it was at least operated as a grocery store at some point. In one blog post I found, the writer recalls that his family bought appliances there.

Photographer facing NE

The store is constructed of concrete blocks, with the classic stair-step pattern on the facade. I don't know what this architectural style is called, but it is present on many older commercial buildings in the south.

One thing that is certain, the exterior of these old concrete buildings hold up against the elements. At nearly ninety years old, this building doesn't look like it's going anywhere anytime soon.

21 Open Air & Groc., Saint Helena, Island, SC

Photographer facing west

Hwy 21 from Beaufort, SC to Hunting Island, SC in Beaufort County, travels through some of the most fertile farmland in the southeastern U.S.

Dotting the highway along this route are several markets which consist of a variety of structures, from old packing warehouses, pole buildings, a couple of canopies side by side, to covered shelving, the latter of which made up the 21 Open Air & Grocery.

To get to Saint Helena Island, you must cross the bridge over the Harbor River at Beaufort, landing on Lady's Island, then across a small bridge over a tidal tributary onto Saint Helena Island. The land is flat with wooded tracts and open farmland interspersed with the ever present tidal marshes. Called the "Lowcountry" for good reason, the elevation at the small town of Frogmore is approximately 30' above sea level.

Photographer facing  east

The islands were occupied by the Union Army very early on during the Civil War, in November of 1861. The islands 350 white inhabitants fled the island, leaving behind more than 2,000 slaves.

 Since this occurred before the January 1, 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, the slaves that were left behind were considered contraband, or spoils of war, caught in limbo between being a slave and being free.

Considered abandoned property, they became wards of the Treasury Department, and Saint Helena Island became ground zero for an experiment in transitioning the enslaved people into independent members of society. The Penn Center in Frogmore was the hub for this experiment, and still exists today as a center for civil rights study. You can learn more about this fascinating place here.

Many of the former slaves stayed in the Lowcountry, and remained heavily involved in the area's agriculture. Many of the markets along Hwy 21 are operated by their descendants. Every spring, strawberry harvesting signals the beginning of the bounty that floods into these markets. Tomatoes, squash, green beans, bell peppers, sweet corn, watermelons, are among the produce that covers the shelves in an array of colorful goodness.

The 21 Open Air & Grocery has been closed for several years. The gates at the front have been locked, and the sign encouraging you to eat Sunbeam bread is fading. I'm not sure what became of the older gentleman that operated this market, or why it closed. Perhaps it was the opening of the Barefoot Farms, a larger pole-barn market situated across the road that offered too much competition. Hopefully, someone will open those gates and get it up and running again. You can never have too many fresh local produce markets.

W.A. Dooley House, c. 1920, Oconee County, GA

Photographer facing north

I came across this gem last week on my way home from the dentist. It caught my eye as I drove past at about 50 mph, prompting me to turn around at the Oconee County Parks and Recreation headquarters. Surrounded by large hardwood trees, the size of the abandoned two-story house is what caught my eye. It has definitely been a long time since anyone has called it home.

Photographer facing NW

Like I do for all properties that I document, I pull up the tax assessor information online and look for the year built, as well as owner information, and any other specifics about the property. For just about every county in Georgia, you can search property information by entering the county name followed by qpublic in your favorite search engine. Except for those counties that want to charge a fee for this service, it is a wonderful resource.

The earliest ownership record shows the property was conveyed from W.A. Dooley in 1978. What came before that is unlisted, so I don't know if they were the original  owner.

This L-shaped home consists of 1,630 sq ft. The main part of the home is 40' across the front x 32' deep. The smaller section that extends off the back right of the house is 14' wide x 25' long. Also on the back left side is a 12' x 23' screen porch. The front porch is 8' deep and runs 33' across the front of the home. I can imagine the family sitting on the front porch on a hot summer afternoon, enjoying the breeze, perhaps listening to a rain shower hitting the tin roof.

Photographer facing NE

Located about halfway between Watkinsville and Bogart, this part of the county, other than the adjacent park, consists of large tracts of beautiful, rolling and open agricultural land. It would be nice if the county could purchase the home with its 20 acres and add it to the park, perhaps renovating the house as an example of an early 20th century farmhouse. Sadly, this one will probably be lost to time and the elements.

Swafford House, c. 1904 Dawson County, GA

Hwy 136 W, photographer facing north

Photographer facing east

This home is located NW of Dawsonville, GA along a stretch of Hwy 136 W that begins a run of open pastures in a county that is primarily wooded. The home grabs your attention as you're driving west due to the yellow color of the siding. I'm not certain what you call the color of the stuccoed chimney, and rusted tin roof, but it certainly compliments the siding.

According to the book, "Dawson County, A History", Robert & Clara Swafford moved into this home in 1921. Who owned the house before that is unknown to me.

Photographer facing NW

According to a lifelong resident of the area, when Mr. and Mrs. Swafford passed away, their daughter Annie Swafford continued to live in the home. Unmarried, she earned money working as a seamstress, and passed away in 2001.

Swafford outbuilding, photographer facing north

The house and a few outbuildings, though not occupied, have obviously been looked after and is a great example of a 100+ year-old house that is still standing today.

J.B. White Company House, c. 1900, Augusta, GA

Broad Street, photographer facing NE

At the turn of the 20th century, the J.B White Company built twenty houses along Broad Street to house employees of their department store. This is the only one left standing (as of 2015 when these photos were taken) out of three properties, side by side, that were deemed historically significant by Historic Augusta, Inc. A link on their website here shows a photo of all three homes, and gives a brief history of the J.B White building project.

J.B. (James Brice) White was an Irish immigrant who opened his first store in downtown Augusta in 1874. He operated the business until it was sold in the 1910's to H.B. Calvin Company.

Broad Street, photographer facing north

Apparently, by 1919, the H.B. Calvin Company had no desire to be in the housing business and decided to liquidate the properties, offering to sell them to the current residents. The upper Broad Street homes listed for $4,000 to $4,500.

Broad Street, photographer facing NE

When I was a kid living in Augusta since the mid 1970s, I always noticed that these houses seemed out of place as the majority of this part of downtown consists of commercial properties. Trips to downtown in the 70s were infrequent as Augusta, like most small cities during that time, resembled a mere shadow of its successful past; before the malls were built, causing a stampede of businesses relocating to the suburbs.

Even as a kid I could see the beauty in these old homes and hoped that somebody would restore them to what must have been their original glory. One of the three houses burned in 2011. Another has been razed as well, leaving this one as the sole reminder of an bygone era.

Old Barn, Dawson County, GA

Afton Road, photographer facing north

Sitting at the edge of a small pasture, this barn is just upslope from a small creek that eventually flows into the Amicalola River. I have passed it many times, but on this clear day the light was enough to make me stop and take a photo. It sits on a 19-acre parcel that is across the road from a home that was built c. 1946. With no other old home around, I'm assuming that at one time these two properties were together.

Located in the northern part of the county, in an area that is still very rural with large acreage tracts, you'd never know you were just an hour north of Atlanta. This area is still far enough away from Hwy 400 (the main artery leading north out of Atlanta) that I have a difficult time picturing much change in the next 20 years or so.

Lake Sidney Lanier Trailer, c.1963, Dawson County, GA

Photographer facing south

The subject in this post is quite different from the old homes that I usually focus on. However, this represents a typical structure from a time when people used to buy small lake lots to build cabins, place mobile homes, and RV's as weekend getaways.

Buford Dam, which holds back the Chattahoochee River, was completed in 1956, and flooded the valleys in Hall, Forsyth, Dawson, Gwinnett, and Lumpkin Counties. The lake is so massive that it took three years from dam completion to 1959 for the lake to fill up to the full pool elevation level of 1071ft above sea level. Since then it has become the water recreation playground of many north Georgians, with approximately 8 million visitors annually.

Addition of roof, deck, and sun room, photographer facing SW

Shortly after completion of the dam, speculators began buying up what would become lakefront property. Many of these developments consisted of very small lots of a half acre or less which were pitched as RV lots to be used as a place to leave the urban areas, such as Atlanta, behind for the peace and solitude of Georgia's newest lake.

During the building boom of the early 2000's, these small lake lots were selling for $250,000 and up. Even after the recession, one can expect to pay a hefty price for the promise of a lake view, and the possibility of having a personal dock from which to launch your boat or jet-ski.

Along with these hefty prices are the expectations that a showplace home must be built. The casualties of this type of thinking are places like the one in this post. There is nothing fancy about a single-wide trailer, but that used to be the point, didn't it? Your lake house was supposed to be a rustic, minimalist getaway; a place to tune out the noise of television and traffic; a place to fish, lay in the hammock in the shade, read a book while enjoying the breeze that is whistling through the screen of an open window. A place to let the quiet envelop you as you visited with family and friends.

As people have amassed more personal wealth, it has become commonplace for the typical lake house to be a 2,500 sqft or larger, air conditioned palace with three and a half bathrooms, 100 channels of television, wireless internet, closed windows, and pizza delivery.

Photographer facing SE

This old lake getaway that was placed in 1963 is set to be removed for the construction of a new house, that will undoubtedly be much easier on the eyes, and will have a beautiful view. The lot next door has a 2,700 sq ft home
was built in 2007, and sold for $450,000 in 2013. It's hard to argue with those numbers, but when you go from a house in the city, with all the modern amenities, to a house at the lake with all the modern amenities, are the memories as special?

Some will see this as an improvement. Like the old homes that are normally the subject of my posts, these lake camps are disappearing fast, and will soon be gone forever.

Photographer facing SE

Update: To the right is a photo of the completed house taken March 22, 2017. Quite a contrast.