129 Academy Street (House), Americus

Source document Quoted word for word from HABS GA,131-AMER,7-. Not written, edited or summarised by this site.

Example of a cottage-style house typical of residential houses of the area ca. Description: This saddlebag house with its central fireplace was originally two rooms wide and one room deep with a front door into each room. The gabled roof is metal standing seam, and a flat-roofed addition extends across the rear. The front porch has been enclosed halfway up; wood siding is exposed on the porch but aluminum siding has been added elsewhere. The structure is raised on brick piers with masonry steps to porch. Some interior bead boards walls remain. History: As early as B.E. Turner sold property to Mary Lanier. Through the years, this property was conveyed, bought or sold until it was acquired by Ely Lanier and Maggie R. Felton.

This property has been deeded to the current owners, Altha Benita Brown Majors and Ely Lanier Jr. Although the Majors and Laniers still own the lot, the City of Americus bought the house and demolished it in accordance with the Jefferson/Ashby Redevelopment Project and reconstructed another house. This house was located in the McCoy Hill neighborhood, encompassing Academy, McCoy, Poplar, Winn, Jefferson and Ashby streets. It was originally the residential property of a prominent antebellum attorney and Confederate general, Henry Kent McCay. The modem misspelling results from the name's pronunciation not matching its own spelling.

During the Reconstruction Era in the the site was used for public executions even as freedmen were establishing a black residential neighborhood in the immediate vicinity. After the destruction of the old McCay home in the early the site became the location of the city's first public school for blacks, McCoy Hill School, built in With the earlier addition of Mt. Olive Baptist Church in the neighborhood boasted the residences of many of the black community's professional class. For example, two of the city's preeminent black educators, Professors George Philips and Alfred S. Staley, were homeowners there. For almost 130 years, the McCoy Hill neighborhood has nurtured generations of Americus' black citizenry.