Griffin, Georgia is an interesting town. As mentioned in my last article, we have been “through it” a few times, on the way to visiting my wife’s sister, in south Atlanta, but had never taken the opportunity to stop there and look around. Because we happened to stay there, overnight, on that last trip, we did get that opportunity – however brief – and were glad we did.
We only saw maybe half of what we would like to have seen. We will definitely have to go back for a longer visit. And we will definitely stay in the same hotel. It is central to the old downtown historic district, and to the walking tour we would like to take.
Our room was on the third floor, overlooking Solomon Street, one of the main east-west streets downtown. Across the street was what looked like the old original Post Office. It is now home to a variety of County offices; a newer, larger Post Office is across the street to the west, with much more room for parking – for both customers and postal delivery vehicles.
Around the corner to the west is a long wooden building that was built in 1899 as probably their railroad depot; and then became home to a wholesale grocery business. It once housed the area’s first long-term cold storage facilities, and is now home to the Griffin / Spalding County Welcome Center, the History of Griffin Museum and the Griffin Art Gallery.
Unfortunately, we did not get to visit it, as it was closed on Saturday morning, the only time we had available that weekend.
But we did get to pick up a handful of brochures on Griffin and Spalding county (which we read later) from a couple of racks on the outside of the building, so all was not lost on that account.
Within two blocks of our hotel were the old Opera House, built in 1892 as the Odd Fellows’ Hall, now home to Angelo’s Mediterranean Restaurant on the ground corner floor, as noted earlier; another gorgeous old building whose façade dated from the late 1800’s, and is now used for other purposes; and an old building that was reputed to have once been home to the early dental practice of “Doc” Holiday, of “Wyatt Earp” fame. Art galleries and antique shops abound, and a coffeeshop around the corner that offered a wide variety of coffee beans, as well as various on-premises drinks and pastries.
Of particular interest to me were re-purposed older buildings, including a one-time home for civil war veterans on the east side (gorgeous building!); a long wooden building now housing an assortment of retail shops; and an old multi-story factory building now home to a studio business, visible from our hotel window.
Plus many others. I am told that nearly 100 buildings in an eight-block area are now listed in the National Register of Historic Places, because of their role in the development of the area.
The only “anomaly,” as it were, in that old downtown area, was a “modern” high-rise building made I think of white marble, that houses the Griffin City Hall. Over half a dozen stories tall (I did not count them) with a connected half-high parking deck, it looked decidedly out of place, but I guess it was thought be a modern addition to their downtown at the time it was built. And it kept the city offices in the downtown area, without overwhelming downtown parking. Savannah had a similar issue, some years ago. A trio of federal buildings on Telfair Square were torn down and rebuilt, but by the time the rebuilding came about, the wide granite panels that were supposed to form the exterior were no longer available; and the ones that were eventually used to replace them were much smaller, and made the exterior of those three buildings look like bathroom shower tiles! Which earned those buildings the unfortunate sobriquet of ‘’the bathroom tile buildings.”
Savannah has long been famous for its downtown historic district because so much of it has been preserved. Griffin has managed to preserve and adapt many of its older buildings well, and that makes their downtown architecturally more interesting. Athens, GA, lost much of its character when “modern office buildings” replaced many of the older ones, due to lack of foresight.
We did enjoy our brief visit to Griffin, GA, and look forward to a return visit one day.
Rafe Semmes is a proud graduate of (“the original”) Savannah High School and the University of Georgia. He and his wife live in eastern Liberty County, and are long-time Rotarians. He writes on a variety of topics, and may be reached at rafe_ semmes@yahoo.com.