Lathemtown Historic District, Lathem Mule Barn, 11643 Cumming Highway (State Route 20), Lathemtown

Source document Quoted word for word from HABS GA-2445-P. Not written, edited or summarised by this site.

The Lathem Mule Barn is located at Cumming Highway/State Route 20 (SR 20) in Cherokee County, Georgia. The resource sits on the north side of the highway and stands east of Trenton Lane and west of Della Smith Road. The farm is located at latitude: longitude: This point was taken from the center of the Lathem Mule Barn It was obtained on September 10, using Google Earth There is no restriction on its release to the public.

Source document Quoted word for word from HABS GA-2445-P. Not written, edited or summarised by this site.

The Lathem Mule Barn is a contributing resource to the Lathemtown Historic District. The early twentieth-century barn supports Lathemtown s significance as an intact, rural historic district. The barn stands as a representation of the agricultural community s continued growth and development during the first half of the twentieth century. See the Lathemtown Historic District (HABS No. GA-2445) overview for further discussion of overall district significance. Historians: Marvin Brown, M.A., Senior Architectural Historian, AECOM Sarah Potere, Architectural Historian, AECOM Report Completed October

Source document Quoted word for word from HABS GA-2445-P. Not written, edited or summarised by this site.

The Georgia Department of Transportation is implementing plans to widen State Route 20 from two to six lanes between Scott Road (near Canton) and North Corners Parkway (near Cumming). The project corridor spans approximately miles and falls within Cherokee and Forsyth Counties. As a result of this roadway expansion, all or part of the Lathem Mule Barn will be demolished. Mitigation efforts were explored and a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) was developed between the United States Army Corps of Engineers, the Georgia Department of Transportation, and the Georgia State Historic Preservation Officer. This Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) documentation (historical narrative report and large format photography) was prepared in accordance with the stipulations of the MOA.

LATHEMTOWN HISTORIC DISTRICT, LATHEM MULE BARN HABS No. GA-2445-P (Page 2) Description: The Lathem Mule Barn stands on the north side of SR 20 and to the west of Della Smith Road. The barn is oriented to the south and is the only resource on its lot. The early twentieth-century mule barn is built of frame and is rectangular in plan. Standing-seam metal clads the building and covers or replaces original wood cladding. A front-gabled roof tops the building and is also clad in standing-seam metal. It is fronted by a stepped parapet wall, which is also clad in standing-seam metal. Modern signage for the landscape supply store which now occupies the building adorns the parapet s front. The building s front (south) facade is divisible into four bays.

The first (western- most) holds a large, square, single-light window set in a wood surround and fronted by metal security bars. A large, square opening which holds a roller-track garage door comprises the second bay and serves as the building s main entrance. It is likely that the opening once held paired, wooden barn doors. The facade s third bay holds a large, rectangular single-light window, which is also fronted by metal security bars. A modern fiberglass door with fixed lights on top and raised panels below is situated to the east of the window and comprises the facade s fourth bay (Figure 3 and Figure 4). Both the building s eastern and western side facades are void of openings. A single opening is centrally placed on the building s rear (north) facade.

Due to its height, the rear roof has been cut, allowing the opening to rise above the rest of the roofline. It is topped by a shed-roof dormer. The opening holds a modern roller track door. The opening is used to accommodate large vehicles. The interior of the barn reveals a newly poured concrete floor in addition to exposed rafters, collar ties, and posts with down bracing. All original stalls have been removed; however, the barn largely retains its original center aisle plan.1 The front (south) portion of the building has been enclosed to create office space. History: This functional building has had multiple commercial uses mule barn, warehouse, feed/poultry business and names, all connected to the Lathem family. W.A.

Lathem and his sons likely erected it as a mule barn; they already operated the family general store immediately to its west. By the Lathemtown had four mule barns, including this one. The others were located on the south side of Cumming Highway: Quay Lathem s barn to the southeast 1 Denise P. Messick, Joseph, and Natalie P. Adams, Tilling the Earth: Georgia s Historic Agricultural Heritage- A Context, (Stone Mountain, GA: New South Associates, 70, accessed June https://www.dca.ga.gov/sites/ LATHEMTOWN HISTORIC DISTRICT, LATHEM MULE BARN HABS No.

GA-2445-P (Page 3) Cumming Highway); Bud Turner/Joel Heard s barn almost opposite (demolished); and Sam Turner s barn (near the southeast corner of the junction of Cumming Highway and Arbor Hill Road).2 The barn s precise construction date was not determined. Tax records date it to Its earliest assigned name is Charlie Lathem s Mule Barn.3 Charles Wesley ( Charlie ) Lathem and his wife, Ethel, lived nearby in the house at Cumming Highway (HABS No. GA-2445-D). One of W.A. Lathem s sons, he ran the store with his brothers, was in charge of the family cotton gin and mill to its rear and operated the mule barn beginning in the According to daughter Nelle Lathem Wallace (born The Mules was the name of our local [baseball] team because Lathemtown was known as Muletown.

I remember my papa, Charlie Lathem, talking about before they had cars and trucks, they d bring in the horses and mules to Canton on trains. Then they d drive the horses and mules in herds all the way up the highway to Lathemtown to his sale barn that he and Dee Cloud operated.5 During the the poultry business and its barns largely supplanted the cultivation of cotton and other row crops in Cherokee and surrounding counties. Demand accordingly grew for freshly hatched chicks and chicken feed and declined for mules to work the fields.6 As result, the entrepreneurial Lathem family altered the building s use from mule barn to feed and poultry business.

2 Cherokee County Heritage Book Committee, The Heritage of Cherokee County, Georgia, 16; Smith White (born remembered the mule trade: There were 4 mule barns in the area along Hwy 20. People would come from all over to buy mules. They d come and look them over just about like you d buy a car. A good mule might have cost between $35 and That would have been about a month s wages back then. In Mary Helen Cissell, Living, Laughing and Loving in Old Lathemtown (Orange, GA: Orange United Methodist Women, 3 Cissell, Living, Laughing, Loving in Old Lathemtown, 4 U.S. World War I Draft Registration Cards, Charles Lathem, accessed June-August ancestry.com/; U.S.

Bureau of the Census, and Federal Censuses; Cissell, Living, Laughing, Loving in Old Lathemtown, 5 Cissell, Living, Laughing, Loving in Old Lathemtown, 6 Karen Manous Smithwick, Poultry Pioneers in Cherokee County, Georgia (Cumming, GA: Cherokee County Historical Society, Monica R. Gisolfi and Paul S. Sutter, The Takeover: Chicken Farming and the Roots of American Agribusiness (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, Monica Richmond Gisolfi, From Crop Lien to Contract Farming: the Roots of Agribusiness in the American South, Agricultural History 80, no. 2 accessed June Rebecca Johnston, Cherokee County Georgia, A History (Canton, GA: Cherokee County Historical Society, Arthur Gannon, Georgia s Broiler Industry, The Georgia Review VI, no.

3 (Fall accessed June LATHEMTOWN HISTORIC DISTRICT, LATHEM MULE BARN HABS No. GA-2445-P (Page 4) In the Charlie s nephew, Frank Lathem, who lived a few doors down at Cumming Highway, began to shift from working at the family s general store to the new business and the barn. A ca. photograph depicts the building s fa ade crossed by a large sign that read Frank Lathem Feed & Poultry. Diane Lathem, Frank s daughter, recalled in Living, Laughing, Loving in Old Lathemtown that her sister, Dot, got to travel with their father to Atlanta in the Big Truck to get fertilizer to stock the store and the warehouse. She further remembered helping him vaccinate the baby chicks when they would come in.

I also helped examine eggs on the conveyor belt with a light to make sure they were good before he shipped them off. 7 A deed for multiple parcels from Frank to his father, Lathem (Charlie Lathem s brother), refers to the building not as a feed and poultry business, but as my warehouse. 8 In common parlance, though, it remained associated with the mule trade. The surveyor who prepared a plat map for the building s parcel in identified it as the Sale Barn. 9 By it was owned by The Mule Barn, Inc., even though that business had been absent for many decades.10 In when it held a landscape supply, it still carried a sign near the top of its fa ade referring to it as the Mule Barn.

Source document Quoted word for word from HABS GA-2445-P. Not written, edited or summarised by this site.

Cherokee County Heritage Book Committee. The Heritage of Cherokee County, Georgia Cumming: Walsworth Publishing Company, Cissell, Mary Helen. Living Laughing and Loving in Old Lathemtown. Orange, GA: Orange United Methodist Church, Cherokee County Clerk of Court Office, Canton. Deed Book 47, Page Deed Book Page Deed Book Page 7 The photograph shows Frank leaning on a truck piled high with 100 pound sacks of Pillsbury s Best feed products. See Cissell, Living, Laughing, Loving in Old Lathemtown, 46. A soda dispenser in the photograph is a Vendo F83 Coca Cola vending machine, produced between and 8 Again, shifting with the tides of the poultry business, the building by then likely held large quantities of chicken feed and no longer dealt in hatchlings.

See Cherokee County Deed Book 47/Page 282 9 Map appended to Cherokee County Deed Book 723/Page 224 10 Cherokee County Deed Book LATHEMTOWN HISTORIC DISTRICT, LATHEM MULE BARN HABS No. GA-2445-P (Page 5) Gannon, Arthur. Georgia s Broiler Industry. The Georgia Review VI, no. 3 (Fall Accessed June Gisolfi, Monica Richmond. From Crop Lien to Contract Farming: the Roots of Agribusiness in the American South, Agricultural History 80, no. 2 Accessed June Gisolfi, Monica R. and Paul S. Sutter. The Takeover: Chicken Farming and the Roots of American Agribusiness. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, Johnston, Rebecca. Cherokee County Georgia, A History. Canton, GA: Cherokee County Historical Society, Messick, Denise P., Joseph, and Natalie P. Adams.

Tilling the Earth: Georgia s Historic Agricultural Heritage- A Context. Stone Mountain, GA: New South Associates, Accessed June https://www.dca.ga.gov/sites/ default/files/ tillingtheearth.pdf. Smithwick, Karen Manous. Poultry Pioneers in Cherokee County, Georgia. Cumming, GA: Cherokee County Historical Society, United States Bureau of the Census. United States Federal Census. Accessed June-August https://www.ancestry.com/. U.S. World War I Draft Registration Cards, Charles Lathem. Accessed June-August at https://www.ancestry.com/. LATHEMTOWN HISTORIC DISTRICT, LATHEM MULE BARN HABS No. GA-2445-P (Page 6) Supplemental Materials 1. Figures Georgia GIO State Imagery September Figure 1: Lathem Mule Barn District Locator Map. LATHEMTOWN HISTORIC DISTRICT, LATHEM MULE BARN HABS No.

GA-2445-P (Page 7) Figure 2: Lathem Mule Barn Site Map. LATHEMTOWN HISTORIC DISTRICT, LATHEM MULE BARN HABS No. GA-2445-P (Page 8) Figure 3: Oblique of Barn, south (front) and west (side) facades. View looking northeast. (Photograph by Sarah Potere, July LATHEMTOWN HISTORIC DISTRICT, LATHEM MULE BARN HABS No. GA-2445-P (Page 9) Figure 4: Oblique of Barn, south (front) and east (side) facades. View looking northwest. (Photograph by Sarah Potere, July LATHEMTOWN HISTORIC DISTRICT, LATHEM MULE BARN HABS No. GA-2445-P (Page 10) Figure 5: Lathem Mule Barn, ca. (Image Courtesy of Orange United Methodist Women).