207 McCoy Street (House), Americus

Source document Quoted word for word from HABS GA,131-AMER,12-. Not written, edited or summarised by this site.

Example of a cottage-style house typical of residential houses of the area ca. Description: This gabled ell cottage has a newer porch added in the ell and a lean-to addition across the rear. The roof is metal standing seam with a simply corbelled chimney. There are two types of wood siding and a mixture of new windows. There is one 8/8 window adjacent to the front door. Historv: According to the Sanborn Fire Maps, 207 McCoy was 108 McCoy under the old numbering system of the City of Americus. The genesis of 207 McCoy dates back to when and Turner sold the property to George B. Warren. Since then this property was conveyed, bought, or sold until the current owner Mattie Ruth Williams resides there.

This historic cottage will be demolished and another house reconstructed due to dilapidated conditions of the 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.