TRR Cobb House - Athens, GA
N 33° 57.624 W 083° 23.123
17S E 279588 N 3760329
An old house, twice relocated, now restored and housing a museum.
Waymark Code: WM60N1
Location: Georgia, United States
Date Posted: 03/12/2009
Views: 1
The home of Thomas Reade Rootes Cobb is of Greek Revival style. The original part of the house was a four over four “Plantation Plain” built about 1834. The house was a wedding gift in 1844 from Joseph Henry Lumpkin, the first Chief Justice of the Georgia Supreme Court, to his daughter Marion and T.R.R. Cobb.
With success at the bar, T.R.R. Cobb grew in influence and wealth. In the late 1840s, Cobb enlarged his relatively modest home to include additional rooms. By 1852, he added the signature octagonal wings and an imposing two story portico with Doric columns, an aesthetic development consistent with the construction of other stately Greek revival mansions that defined the architecture of antebellum Athens.
Following Cobb’s death in 1862, Marion continued to live in the house until 1873 when she sold it. The house was next used as rental property, fraternity house, and boarding house, until purchased in 1962 by the Archdiocese of Atlanta for the use of St. Joseph’s Catholic Church. In the 1980s, the house was threatened with demolition when St. Joseph’s began pursuing expansion plans. The Stone Mountain Memorial Association stepped forward in 1984, bought the house, and moved the structure to Stone Mountain Park near Atlanta the following year.
Due to budgetary constraints, however, the house was never restored at Stone Mountain Park and instead was mothballed for later use. So for nearly 20 years the house sat on the same cinder blocks it had originally been placed when it arrived at the Park. In 2004 the Watson-Brown Foundation, working with the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation and the Athens-Clarke Heritage Foundation, bought the house from the Stone Mountain Memorial Association. A generous grant from SMMA helped move the home back to Athens in the spring of 2005. The Watson-Brown Foundation managed and funded a painstaking restoration that returned Cobb's home to its 1850 appearance. In 2008, the Georgia Trust awarded the T.R.R. Cobb House its Preservation Award for excellence in restoration. Today, Cobb's home is open to the public as Athens' newest historic house museum.
The restored T.R.R. Cobb House, operated by Watson-Brown Foundation, Inc., opened in 2007 as a historic house museum. The mission of the TRR Cobb House is, through careful restoration, judicious recreation and responsible interpretation, the TRR Cobb House will seeks ways to preserve, explore and present the life and legacy of its owner as a legal scholar, a civil leader, a statesman, a slave owner, and a military officer in an effort to cultivate a greater understanding and appreciation of nineteenth century southern life.
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