Large 18-room rambling home in Georgia
The Cedars - Cedar Retreat, Washington Georgia
The Cedars is a good example of the large, rambling, asymmetrically composed, and liberally ornamented home characteristic of the High Victorian Era. The descendants of its builder, Marshall Sims, have perhaps expressed best the visual and associated emotional tone of the structure. They believe that Sims, himself, designed the house, building into the interior a kind of wasteful spaciousness that provided room for a boisterous family of ten children. The complex does convey an aura of the exuberance of Victorian family life, a kind of life that his grandchildren affectionately recall.
The history of the present building is as varied and interesting as the form of the structure itself. The land on which this home stands, as the Georgia Historical Commission marker in front points out, was once a homesite for Indians. Later the land belonged to George Walton, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, to whom it was granted after the Revolution. He sold 1150 acres in 1786 to Thomas Wingfield, who, in 1792, sold 594 acres to Dr. Anthony Poullain, his daughter Sarah's husband. Poullain, who built the first small frame home on this site, was a French physician who came to America and participated in the Revolutionary War as a surgeon. Poullain died in 1794, leaving, a son, Thomas Noel, who later attended the Medical College of Philadelphia and settled in nearby Greensboro. Poullain's wife sold the house and land in 1803 to John Bolton, a wealthy merchant from Savannah. The house, with the additions and improvements made by Bolton, was then known as Bolton's Retreat. In 1813, Bolton sold the house and the land, which by that time totaled 210 acres, for $3000 to Nicholas Long. Long owned lands to the north and east and gave the house in 1817 to his son Richard Harrison Long, who was living there at the time. Later the place came into the possession of Augustus H. Gibson, a merchant who kept a store on the square of the town and who died about 1837. From his estate in 1838 Francis Colley purchased the house and lot for $2000. Colley, who died March 23rd, 1863, had willed the property on December 28, 1859, to his daughter Sarah Ann Francis, allowing her husband Milton G. Robert the privilege of improving the premises on which Colley still lived. The Roberts' daughter, Mary, was married to Marshall Mercer Sims in November 1871, and on September 25th, 1883, the Robert heirs sold 23 acres of the property to Sims for $1400.
Sims, who had ten children, built the eleven-room addition which now constitutes the front part of the Cedars, which was known at the time as The Cedar Retreat. In an old photograph showing the family assembled in front of the newly completed Victorian facade is the first child born in this portion, now (1971) eighty-four years old, Mrs. Edna Green, who now lives in Florida. Also included in the photograph are two other daughters of Marshall Sims, Mrs. W. R. Latimer and Mrs. Bessie DeVaughn, who still live in the house (1971).
Building Description
The Cedars is a rambling, eighteen-room structure that stands on a high hill in the northern section of Washington. Behind a large, two-story front section are an early nineteenth-century building and a remnant of a late-century house. The oldest portion of the Cedars is the kitchen, all that remains of the original house built on the site in c.1793 by Anthony Poullain. This room, clearly visible on the exterior as a separate structure, is attached at the northwest corner of the back of the complex. It has been turned ninety degrees from its original position, placing the chimney on the western side. Handblown panes of glass in the windows attest to its age. Timbers from the rest of the original house can be found in the construction of outbuildings that remain on the property.
The second stage in the development of the house is the six-room, one-story addition, cc. 1805, which makes up the back and central portions of the present building. It apparently began as a four-room central hall plan with shed rooms attached. Rectangular transom lights over the doors at either end of this hall and raised door sills suggest these were both exterior doors. The south end of this hall now leads into the front and final two-story addition of c. 1885 by Marshall Sims. It is this eleven-room front section with its profusion of cut-work details elaborating its picturesque form that gives the house its High Victorian identity. Rooms leading off in several directions from an L-shaped hall produce an asymmetrical plan that stretches longitudinally across one end in front of the older sections. The stem-end of the L extends horizontally across the width at the back of the front section. A tower extends above the multiple gable roofs on one side of a low veranda which is wrapped around the front and eastern sides of the main mass. The curved brackets of the posts and cornices and the elaborate cut-work of balconies and gables has something of the three-dimensional quality of Eastlake decoration, but is closer in general feeling to the earlier wooden trim of Italianate and stick-style buildings.
Inside, the wide spacious, hall conveys an impression of monumental simplicity which belies the complex arrangement of rooms. A straight-run stairway is located in the stem end of the L-shaped plan and ascends to a spacious upper hall that looks out over multiple roofs over the one-story older part of the house in the rear. Notable features of the interior are two fine, black soapstone mantels inlaid with dark marble that are located in the double parlors behind the long veranda.
Side view toward the east (1970)
