Georgia County Government-August 2008

COURTHOUSE continued from page 29 The town’s population mushroomed from around 600 in 1900 to more than 3,500 in 1910. Long before The Georgia and Florida Railway completed extensive shops at Douglas, The Douglas Weekly Breeze was spewing forth the usual boosterism of the era. As early as 1904, the editor related that Douglas had 25 brick stores, two banks and “one of the most systematic and artistically designed courthouse in the state.” When the old Coffee County Courthouse burned in 1898, citizens in Douglas were suddenly confronted with not only a pressing need for a new court building, but also with a desire to create a grand symbol to voice their new-found railroad imported aspirations. The design that Andrew J. Bryan presented may have appeared new to Coffee County leaders in 1899, but it was virtually the same drawing that the Atlanta architect had presented to business leaders in Toccoa two years earlier when that town made its unsuccessful bid for the Habersham County seat. The elevation presented at Toccoa is basically that of the late French Renaissance, sometimes called the Francois I Style, and often referred to as the Chateauesque Style in America. Round towers with conical caps and ornate, high penicaled dormers epitomize this style. Before Bryan presented his plan in Coffee County, he altered his design, pushing it subtly back in time toward Romanesque imagery. Gone was the Francois I “basket handle” arch in the high tower that was originally proposed for Toccoa. In its place was the familiar triple arch, typical of Romanesque designs of the era. These adjustments accomplished only the first in a series of Romanesque alterations to Bryan’s original Toccoa design. By the time the building was complete in 1900, the bold lintels of the French Renaissance had been replaced with sashed windows, and the heavy window headers on the second story had become the graceful round-arched openings of the Romanesque Revival. We might assume from all of this that the fundamental mass and masculinity of H. H. Richardson’s Romanesque designs were more attractive to rural Southerners in 1900 than the frilly pomp of the French Renaissance. This was doubtless true, but we must also keep in mind that in creating the style that we have come to call the “Richardsonian Romanesque,” Richardson himself often overlaid his massive medieval forms with French Renaissance motifs. Especially notable in this regard is Richardson’s favored use of ornate French Renaissance peaked gables and his pension for heavy masonry window lintels and mulls also typical of the French Renaissance. Whatever the stylistic description of Bryan’s 1900 Coffee County Courthouse at Douglas, it supplied local business leaders with just the symbol they required to announce their great expectations. For a brief moment, it appeared that these loft y dreams would materialize. But by the time the rails of The Georgia and Florida Railway crossed The Atlanta, Birmingham and Atlantic at Douglas, Georgia’s great pine forests were gone. The sea of cotton, which sprouted in their place, would run dry by 1920. For Douglas, like so many Southern towns that had sailed on the waters of New South promise, the middle of the 20th century would prove a disappointing destination — Bry■ an’s Coffee County Courthouse burned in 1939. 30 GEORGIA COUNTY GOVERNMENT http://www.ACCG.org

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Georgia County Government-August 2008

Georgia County Government- August 2008 Contents President’s Message County Matters Georgia’s Transportation Issues More Critical to Counties than Ever Expanding Rural Airports: Partnering for Economic Development in Upson County Meet DOT Commissioner Gena Abraham Bridge Infrastructure and Risk Counties and the Law: Georgia’s Fair Employment Practices Act Georgia’s Grand Old Courthouses: Coffee County Extension News: Infrastructure Investments Save County Funds Research Corner: Getting the Most Out of Your Research Discover the New Georgia Encyclopedia NACo News Staff News County Parade Index of Advertisers

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