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Photo Gallery: Medical College
The historic district (actually labeled as an "area" of these two
buildings) is on Broadway Street facing the railroad tracks.
The next time a visit can be made to Spalding County, the additional
(non-registered buildings) can be added to the gallery.
The Griffin Medical College building is the only one of four
pre-Civil War college buildings still standing in Griffin. This school,
incorporated as the Middle Georgia Medical College in 1859, was granting
degrees in the pre-war period along with Griffin Synodical Female College,
the Griffin Female College, and Marshall College for Boys and Young Men, all
established in the early 1850's. Only Marshall College and Griffin Female
College were revived briefly after the war. The buildings which housed three
of these schools have either burned or been torn down leaving only the
Medical College.
The Medical College was incorporated by the Georgia legislature in 1859 with
power to grant degrees and licenses to students of medicine and surgery. The
college was founded as Dr. E. F. Knotts Primary Medical School on November
1, 1858, and moved to the house on East Broadway in 1859. The house was
remodeled in 1860 indicating the success of the school. However, a lien was
attached to the property because of unpaid carpentry work in July of 1861,
and was sold at a sheriff's sale in 1866. In 1873, Lucius Goddard bought the
Medical school building for a hotel known first as the Goddard House and,
when he sold it in 1906, as the Southern Hotel.
The building was subsequently remodeled into apartments although the basic
structure and architectural details are basically unchanged. The smaller
adjacent house had also been bought by the Goddards by 1893, but it was sold
to the present owner's family in 1904.The Griffin Medical College property
includes two structures located on East Broadway in one of the oldest
sections of town facing the railroad tracks. The major structure is the
Middle Georgia Medical College Building, a two-story structure of
stucco-covered brick. The central body of the structure, which dates from
the early 1850's, was built on a two-room side hall plan. Two rooms on each
floor and in the daylight basement are served by fireplaces in a central
chimney. A western wing, added later, has a central hall plan with end
chimneys, one of which is attached to the west wall of the' original
portion.
To the rear along Fifth Street are two later additions. The first, which was
the dining hall, dates from 1860. A large, Tuscan, square-columned portico
extends along both the East Broadway and Fifth Street facades, and, before
the addition of the Victorian wing, was continued along the western facade.
The Victorian wing facing East Broadway carries out the original theme
through two-story porches that are functionally connected to the original
section. The foundation and floor of the dining hall wing are lower than the
original portion of the building. The smaller adjacent house is a one-story,
hipped roof structure that may have been built first. The house has a
four-room, central hall plan of the dog-trot design with a wing added later
on the eastern side in the rear. The house is entered through a porch which
runs across the front in a manner typical of such houses of the period in
Georgia.
(Source:
www.cityofgriffin.com)
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