This Victorian Home was built by the owner of the Lumber Plantation that surrounded it

Woodland House, Lumber City Georgia

Date added: February 02, 2024 Categories:

Woodland is the largest and most imposing house in rural Wheeler County. In the state, it stands as an important example of a carpenter-built Victorian Eclectic country house dating from the 1870s, a period when very little construction occurred. Its multi-gable roof with forward-facing gable ends, bracketed roofline and window cornices, bay windows, and sawn work porch and gable detailing are features drawn from a variety of Victorian styles and put together in a distinctive manner by the builder. The two-story porch-walkway connecting the main house and the rear building is a most unusual feature and of particular interest. The Gothic-style sawn work trim is very elaborate and of exceptionally high quality, reflecting the first owner's connection with the timber industry. The interior of the house also documents a degree of finish unusual for a rural house of this period and location. The particularly fine downstairs parlor mantels, the woodwork throughout the house, the pressed-metal cornices and ceilings (not often found in residential structures), the two-story kitchen/dining room/schoolroom building, and the sheer number of rooms distinguish the house as a fine rural example of the Victorian Eclectic style.

Woodland is significant for its association with the locally important late-nineteenth-century timber industry and with two locally prominent families. Following the Civil War, at a time when the cotton economy was in a shambles, Georgia's pine forests were first looked at as a valuable natural resource, prime for immediate industrial development. The lumber industry developed rapidly during the 1870s as companies were formed and large landholdings acquired. In Wheeler County, then Montgomery County, lumbering became the number-one industry as sawmill towns such as Lumber City sprang up in the area.

The McArthur family had owned portions of the land associated with Woodland since 1827. After the Civil War, Walter T. McArthur (1837-1894) began the development of his father's property as a timber plantation and built the house. In 1877, when his father died, he inherited the property. McArthur had fought in the Civil War, served in the state legislature for several sessions (1868-1871) and worked for a short time for the Georgia Land and Timber Company, a huge real estate and timber operation headquartered in Brunswick, Georgia, before settling down to develop Woodland. His son, Douglas S. McArthur followed in his father's footsteps and managed the property after his father's death, using the name McArthur and Company.

In 1917, the property was sold to Emory Winship (1872-1932), a career naval officer from a well-to-do and socially prominent Macon family. Winship used the house as a hunting lodge and retreat during the years of his ownership.

Building Description

Woodland is a large two-story Victorian Eclectic style country house dating from 1877. It has a smaller two-story rear service building joined to the main house by a two-story porch/walkway. Woodland is located on a four-acre landscaped property in rural Wheeler County.

The main house is L-shaped and the rear building is rectangular. Both are weatherboarded, except for an area of the main house protected by the front porch which is sided with scalloped paneling. The roof of the main house is multi-gabled, with two gable ends oriented to the front facade; the rear building has a simple gable roof. Windows in both buildings are large six-over-six double-hung sash trimmed with bracketed cornices. The house has a brick foundation and five interior chimneys. The five-bay front facade has a full-width porch with a central projecting portion that protects the front steps. The porch is elaborately detailed with a balustrade, porch posts with carved brackets, and highly decorative arched sawn work trim in the frieze area. This sawn work detailing is repeated above as bargeboarding in the gable ends and trim for a central dormer. The simply detailed main entrance has double, paneled doors with a transom above; to either side, French doors open from the main rooms onto the front porch. A bracketed cornice and two bay windows on the south side of the first floor complete the detailing of the main house. The two-story porch flanks the rear ell and extends back to provide a covered walkway to the rear building. This porch is detailed with the same elaborate arched sawn work as the front porch. It has a prominent single-run stairway connecting its first and second levels. The rear building has entrances on all four sides, identical window and cornice trim to the main house, and somewhat simpler gable bargeboards.

The main house has a four-over-four room with a central hall plan with a two-story ell to the rear. The rear building has three rooms on each floor. Walls are plaster, floors are wood, and ceilings are plaster or, in the second-floor stair hall, rear-ell bedrooms, and rear building rooms, pressed metal. (Additional pressed-metal ceilings were removed in a 1975 renovation.) Doors and windows have wide molded surrounds; baseboards are deep, and cornices vary from intricate wood crown moldings in the main first-floor rooms to pressed-metal cornices in the second-floor bedrooms and rear building. The central hall on both levels has scalloped wood wainscoting. Mantels, located in nearly every room, range from imposing marbleized mantels with arched openings and mirrored overmantels in the principal downstairs rooms to small wood mantels with flanking pilasters and simple mantel shelves in most other rooms. An open, single-run stairway with turned balusters and a mahogany handrail is located in the central hall. Two large formal parlors, each with a bay window and separated by a wide opening with pocket doors, are located along the south side of the house. The north front room was a library. Most of the rest of the rooms in the main house were bedrooms, with two bathrooms also located on the second floor. The rear building originally housed the kitchen, dining room, pantry, a schoolroom, and, probably, some servants' quarters. In 1978, the kitchen was moved to a large room on the first-floor ell of the main house that was created by removing a wall separating what were originally two bedrooms.

The house is situated well back from the main road on a flat piece of property informally landscaped with shade trees, foundation shrubbery, and lawn. A picket fence and a row of magnolia trees shield the property from Highway 19 and Old Bell Ferry Road. A historic wood-frame carriage house, later adapted as a garage, and the metal support structure for a windmill are the only other historic structures on the property. Farmland borders the property to the north and west; a pecan orchard is situated to the south, and additional outbuildings once associated with the property are located to the east.