Macon Magazine

5: Mediterranean/Italian Renaissance Block-Coleman-Porter House, 245 College St., 1906 "MEDITERRANEAN" IS A CATCH-ALL TERM that encompasses the late 19th and early 20th century eclectic architectural fashions of Italian Renaissance (not to be confused with the earlier Italianate), Mission and Spanish Revival styles. This exotic dwelling reflects the best of these crosscurrents. Nicholas Block, president and later sole owner of the Dempsey Hotel – as well as head of the Central City Ice Manufacturing Company, National Milling Company, Massee and Felton Lumber Company, Acme Brewing Company and various banking interests – retained Macon architect Alexander Blair to design a new house for this key site facing the head of Bond Street. An earlier two- story wooden dwelling on the lot was moved to Garden Street in the Mill Hill area. Block's wife came from Cincinnati, and he sent Blair to that city and to St. Louis to study Mediterranean architecture as it was emerging in their new suburbs. is stuccoed brick house features a Ludowici tile roof, a deep cornice with bracketed eaves, applied ornaments of shields and torches, arched windows and doors, a central oval window set in a rococo frame, a side porte-cochere and marble steps leading up to a front square-columned porch – all typical of the Mediterranean style. Ornamenting the front terraces, the deteriorated balusters, formerly of glazed terra cotta, have recently been replaced with stone balusters in the same profile. e spacious interior with oak and walnut paneling and other spectacular finishes boasts a basement with service areas, six rooms on each of the first two levels and a single large space on the third floor that served as a ballroom. Sold in 1923 to Samuel T. Coleman II, founder of Cherokee Brick Company, and his wife, Edith Stetson Coleman, the residence became a boarding house after 1950 and was condemned by the city prior to its remarkable restoration by Mr. and Mrs. Ben Porter in the 1970s. 4: Macon Cottage Burke-Henry House, 1027 Walnut St., 1860 WHILE LARGER HOUSES WERE THE NORM on lower Walnut Street, much of the upper end past Ayres Row was eventually characterized by smaller, single-story dwellings. The Rev. John W. Burke, a Methodist minister with a prosperous printing business, acquired this lot (then 1 acre) in 1859 and immediately began construction of a house with one principal floor of a central hall and four rooms, and a brick basement level below containing a kitchen, dining room and work rooms. Greek Revival elements, such as the six-over-six windows and the rectilinear door architrave with sidelights and transom, combine with a front porch showing the influence of the Carpenter Gothic style in its jigsaw-cut square columns and balustrade. Later owners, the Robert Lamar Henry family, expanded the house with the addition of wings on either end in 1890. When rehabilitated as an office and apartments in the late 1960s by leading architect Jackson Holliday and his wife, Cordelia, the Burke House was cited for its history and character as a Macon Cottage in an article on the project in the Macon Telegraph and News. The paper noted that the late architect/ architectural historian Walter Hartridge of Savannah spoke in Macon at the organizational meeting of the Middle Georgia Historical Society in 1964 and first articulated the importance of this form. He stated that Macon had a "wonderful heritage" with its Greek Revival houses and small dwellings, adding that cottages of the 1870s and 1880s "formed the heart of Macon." Walking past Burke House toward College Street, one can see the stylistic evolution of the cottage form from vernacular Italianate examples to later vernacular versions of Victorian styles, such as Queen Anne and Eastlake, and eventually to Craftsman and Prairie types of the early 20th century. 78 maconmagazine.com | JUNE/JULY 2020

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