ca. 1833 Hardy Bryan House

Our Current Offices Are In the Historic Hardy Bryan House

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The rear wing is the earliest extant portion of the house. This is based on both construction techniques employed and to a lesser degree, stylistic features. The surviving original structural members, being hewn rather than sawn, suggests construction early in the century before a sawmill had been established in the rural village of Thomasville. The floor joists were actual logs, a portion of which was shaved off to provide a level plan on which to set the flooring. Such a construction technique, generally associated with dwellings built before 1800, has been seen by the author in Georgia, however, as late as 1825.

The rear portion of the house was undoubtedly built as a residence. It could have started life on another site in town and later moved by Bryan to be adapted as a rear wing for his new, more pretentious two-story townhouse. Equally possible is the possibility that the house was built by Bryan and survives on its original foundations (1).   Owning several contiguous lots in the embryonic hamlet, Bryan may well have envisioned his new dwelling more as a mini-farm than an in-town, street-oriented house, never realizing how quickly Thomasville’s urban center would develop (2).

The 1830s house was a simply finished three-room dwelling with a porch across its north elevation and unfinished garret above. Based on architectural research, a conjectural floor plan of the original dwelling house is included herein (3).  Of particular interest in the original portion of the house are the tall, wide windows retaining their seemingly original sash, each four lights wide and high.  Sash more than three lights wide, while common in New England and the upper Mid-Atlantic States, are not commonly found in the Deep South (4).  And too, the glass size, being 7” x 9”, is extremely rare in the early nineteenth century when 8” x 10” or larger glass was the standard.

It is the author’s speculation that Bryan, in keeping with his expanding wealth, undertook building the rather imposing street-oriented parlor and passage portion of his house in the late 1840s (5).  It is thought that his was Thomasville’s first two-story dwelling. While generous in size and scale, evidence is clear that this Greek Revival structure was quite simple in detail. The Spartan interior woodwork (i.e. window and door trim, baseboard, doors, etc.) appears to have been devoid of moulded wood detail as may be seen today in the second floor rooms (6).  The exterior of the house appeared then much as we see it today, only simpler. Originally, the rear portion of the roof was hipped (as confirmed by the 1885 birds-eye view of Thomasville) and there were six columns across the front portico, accounting, no doubt, for the seemingly unrelated placement of window and door openings behind (7).

The simplicity of the house was later changed either by Bryan himself before his death in 1859 or later, after the Civil War, by the Linton family when they purchased the property in 1872. The house was embellished when the owner removed the front door, replacing it with an impressive new door in the Italianate taste with flanking side lights and deep transom, lowered the first floor windows to conform with prevailing taste, embellished the interior woodwork by installing moulded backbands (8),  installed new mantlepieces (9),  cornices and two doors (10),  and embellished the front façade with a decorative treatment over the first floor windows, brackets at the cornice and possibly the decoration in the pediment.

To determine whether these alterations and additions were undertaken by the Bryan or Linton families, further historical research must be undertaken. The Italianate character of the work is one of the eclectic styles advocated by A. J. Downing in The Architecture of Country Houses as early as 1850 but whether this style was favored by Bryan is not known. It may indeed have been after the War, when Linton purchased the property in 1872, that embellishment of Bryan’s “plantation plain” house was undertaken. Work was definitely done to the house at that time as evidenced by a finish board in the exterior cornice which bears Linton’s name on the reverse side(11).  The state of the house during this period is further documented by a newspaper account in 1882 which describes the house:

I next saw a square antique two-story frame building erected in the town – forty-five years ago – by Hardy Bryan. It is in a perfect state of preservation, and the style of the grounds around it indicates the home as a place of wealth at present (12).

The house is pictorially documented in 1885 by a published bird’s-eye view map of Thomasville. Clearly it can be seen that the house had a two stage front porch, hip on the rear of the main roof, latticed porch on the north side of the rear wing and an additional wing (probably a kitchen {13} ) appended to the rear of the building. Three detached dependencies appear to be associated with the house.

The Sanborn maps from 1895 to 1928 indicate various alterations to the house. By 1895 a small addition had been appended to the north side of the kitchen wing (14).  This map also confirms the roof overhang on the south elevation of the rear wing. It is known that by 1905 the kitchen wing had been removed. A later Sanborn map confirms that the lattice porch in the rear wing survived until 1912. Soon thereafter, however, the porch was undoubtedly enclosed (15)  and the interior east-west partition relocated a few feet to the south where it exists today (16).

1. Surviving evidence suggests that the house actually faced north based on the location of the porch and parlor (or chamber) in the plan.
2.  The floor plan layout classifies this building as a Quaker plan house, the precedent for which goes back to seventeenth century Philadelphia. There are a handful of such houses in Georgia.
3.  Evidence is clear that the original roof overhung the south façade by at least two feet, recalling eighteenth century Hudson River Dutch houses.
4.  The floor joists in this portion of the house are circular sawn suggesting that they probably do not date much before 1850.
5. The major openings on both floors were surrounded with a totally unarticulated casing. Original surviving doors (which survive on the second floor and on the closet doors adjacent to the parlor) are of the simplest two panel type. Originally, there were no interior cornices as can be clearly seen when the existing later cornice is removed. The existing stair is original but adorned only by its handsomely turned newel post.
6.  Mortice pockets in the plate of the portico clearly confirm the existence of six original columns. Flashing on the chimney and associated mortar washes, as well as the second floor ceiling framing confirm the roof’s hipped configuration. Speculation that one of the original columns survives beneath the front porch floor was found to be erroneous. While undoubtedly similar in character to the columns that would have been installed on the house in the 1840s, the column in question survives from another, more monumental structure of the same period.
7.  When the backband is removed from original (unbeaded) casings on the first floor, one can see early paint on the surface beneath.
8.  Evidence in the wood nailer embedding in the parlor chimney mass indicates the existence of an earlier mantelpiece.
9. The two passage doors.
10.  The board is located above the second floor east window on the south façade.
11.  Extracted from “The Hardy Bryan Old Residence”, by William R. Mitchell, Jr. 22 Sept 1978.
12.  A patched hole on the east side of the rear chimney suggests that this room shared the existing chimney flue.
13. This map also indicates that the front porch was only one story in height. Architectural evidence proves this to be false.
14. The windows in the rear wing where the porch was located are clearly copies of original 16 over 16 window sash.
15.  The plaster lath on this partition (and other related to this alteration) is modern, held in place with wire nails.
16. The plaster lath on this partition (and other related to this alteration) is modern, held in place with wire nails.

Adapted by Brent Runyon from summary based on report to Thomasville Landmarks from Norman Davenport Askins Architect dated December 18, 1978.

Note: The findings in this report are based on physical evidence seen during the rehabilitation of the house as well as a research report written by William R. Mitchell, Jr. Subsequent information may have been found since that time, but is not included herein. The report is presented as an historical document.