Prince-Pope-Simpson-Stephens House GA named after a crooked tree
Poplar Corner, Washington Georgia
- Categories:
- Georgia
- Beaux-Arts
- House
The Prince-Pope-Simpson-Stephens House is the only fully developed Beaux-arts, classical revival structure in Washington. Other houses have added columns in the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century years, but have done so in a less elaborate and ornate manner.
In 1810 Oliver Hillhouse Prince built the two-story Federal-style house that makes up the front section. Prince, born in Connecticut, came to Wilkes County as a boy of fourteen with his uncle, David Hillhouse. After he was commissioned by the State of Georgia in 1822 to lay out the city of Macon, he moved from Washington and sold his house in 1825 to Augustus Gibson. Subsequently, between 1828 and 1829 Prince served in the United States Senate. He was living in Athens, where Prince Avenue bears his name when he died in a shipwreck off the North Carolina coast in 1837.
When Alexander Pope bought the Prince House from Augustus Gibson on June 8th, 1825 he was apparently already in residence there. Pope then purchased, for the lumber, the old 1785 Wilkes County Courthouse, which was still standing opposite the public square where a new courthouse had been built in 1817. From this he made the two-story, four-room addition that is the back of the present house. Evidence of this step is extant in the foundation under the side porches and in the weatherboarding and exterior chimney in an upstairs closet. The house remained a Pope family home until 1873 when the Pope heirs sold the house and twenty acres to William Simpson, a prosperous cotton land owner and merchant from Sparta in Hancock County.
William Simpson was the son of a pioneer Wilkes County family. It was he who named the home Poplar Corner because of the large, crooked-limbed poplar tree which stands in the northwest corner of the lot. Simpson made many changes in the house, including the Victorian remodeling of the exterior and similar period detailing of the dining room which replaced one previously used in the basement. After William's death in 1887, Poplar Corner became the home of his son, Dr. Robert Simpson, a greatly beloved physician who practiced medicine in Wilkes County for sixty years. He had returned to Washington after graduation from the New York College of Physicians and Surgeons, and study in Germany. Dr. Simpson renovated the house and in 1905 added the colonnade. He spent much time on the grounds arranging the flower gardens and shrubbery which are still extant. At his death, he left the property to his nephew and namesake, Dr. Robert G. Stephens, who lived there into his 90's.
Poplar Corner has been the home of several prominent Washington families who have all made contributions to the life of the county. Their home still makes a forceful and monumental impression in its gardens on a street that now includes later and smaller homes.
Building Description
The Prince-Pope-Simpson-Stephens House is a monumental, two-story, white clapboard building that has grown, like other Meshing ton houses, in stages. However, unlike many y of the others, major changes include exterior changes in the Victorian period and a colonnade added, not in the Greek Revival era of the 1840s, but early in the twentieth century. The front portion, c. 1810, is a plantation-plain style house with Federal details built on a four-room, central hall plan with a curving staircase. The back section is a four-room addition that Alexander Pope made in 1825 by moving the old 1785 Wilkes County courthouse and joining it to the 1810 house. Renovations by William Simpson in the 1880s covered the body of the extant house with brackets and other Victorian details and added side porches. In 1905 the elaborate Corinthian portico, added to the front of the house by Robert Simpson, made the home into the Beaux-arts revival mansion that stands today on spacious grounds at the corner of Liberty and Pope streets.
The monumentally scaled Corinthian portico is the most impressive feature of the exterior, although details of both the Victorian era and the antebellum Federal phase of the home's growth are still a part of the total form. The entrance facade reveals its early nineteenth-century date by a round fanlight and side lights framing the opening and an elliptical fan with side lights above a hanging balcony. Four colossal Corinthian columns support an entablature that is elaborated by a swag frieze. This pattern is tied to the older body of the house by an extension of the frieze around both sides under the bracketed cornice and by another band of the frieze that runs across the facade between the two stories. On either side Victorian porches with bracketed posts and cornices have also been tied to the portico design by swag friezes along the front face and Corinthian columns which have been inserted at the corners. From the backyard, where a pigeon house and other outbuildings remain, some of the additions to the house can be seen, in particular the one-story kitchen wing added in the 1800s.
Federal-style details are visible in the interior in sunburst friezes over the mantels in both front parlors and in the curving stairway. While the heavy newel post of the stairway is obviously a later addition, and the balusters may also have been changed, the curving shape and scroll stair ends are similar to that of many houses of the early nineteenth century in the piedmont area. In the dining room dark trim, spool woodwork and stained glass windows have transformed this room which was originally part of the 1785 courthouse into a High Victorian interior.