The Candler-Linder House

Asa Candler, Jr., moved from Los Angeles, CA, to Hartwell, GA in the fall of 1900. By May of 1901 he was engaged and in July he was married. In the spring of 1902 his wife, Helen, gave birth to a baby girl, and just like that he was a daddy. Having lived in boarding houses since he was eight years old, he was anxious to put down roots and establish a permanent home for his new family. Luckily, his father, Asa, Sr., and mother, Lucy Elizabeth, didn’t want their first grandchild raised without the security of a home to call her own.

A deed from August 21, 1902 shows the land transferred from one T. B. Brown to Asa Candler, Sr. Buddie’s birthday was August 27th, so it’s a reasonable assumption that the property was a birthday gift. The house itself dates back to the turn of the century, although records make it unclear whether the house already existed when Asa, Sr., purchased it, or whether he had the house built to suit. One local source claims the house was built in 1890. Buddie and Helen lived there for the next three years, and welcomed their second child, Asa III, into their growing family in 1904.

After the death of Asa III in 1905, Asa, Sr., made arrangements to bring Buddie and his family home to Atlanta. At that point he signed the house over to his son so he could be the financial beneficiary of its sale. This was not unusual for Asa, Sr., who did the same for his daughter Lucy years later after her first husband died.

Present day descriptions of the Hartwell house often cite its beauty and unusual detailing. Having visited Hartwell, I find the superlative claims to be a bit of an overstatement. Out on Benson St. one can find examples of much grander, more beautiful period homes.

The National Historic Register application includes robust details about the house’s construction and layout.

“The Candler-Linder House is a two-story, wood-framed, Victorian Eclectic-style residence with Eastlake porch detailing. Its wood frame is sheathed with weatherboards; the roof is gabled. An unusual one-story angular porch extends across the three-bay front facade; a second-floor porch is centered on the middle bay, under a cross gable. The front porch features a variety of Eastlake-style cut woodwork. The ends of the house are highlighted with two-story projecting bays with paired 6/6 windows. Toward one back corner of the house is a one-story extension which mimics the design of the main body of the house.

On the interior, the house is arranged around a central stair hall. Interior materials and finishes include tongue-and-groove wainscoting, wood floors, plaster walls, period mantels, and original wood doors.

Architecturally, this house is significant as an unusual late Victorian structure in the multiple resource area. Built about 1900, it features traditional Plantation Plain-style massing and arrangement. This traditional form is broken by prominent two- story bays on either end of the house, however, and these bays are typical if somewhat unusual Victorian features. The front porch, with its elaborate Eastlake-style woodwork and unusual angled corners, is among the finest front porches in the community. ”

— Candler-Linder House National Historic Registry application

In 1908, Buddie sold the Hartwell house to Fred P. Linder, a telecom man who would go on to become very important to the Hartwell community. The timing of the sale is interesting, because 1908 is when Buddie moved his family from the house on Jackson St. in Atlanta to the one in Inman Park. The 1907 Atlanta city directory lists Buddie’s home address as the Inman Park location, but on April 25, 1908, the Atlanta Georgian ran a blurb about Asa, Jr.’s house, likely placed by himself, which speaks of the structure as new construction. Could Buddie have needed the money from the Hartwell house sale to finalize the transaction on the Inman Park property? The theory may sound overreaching, but Buddie’s pattern of income vs expenses around major transitions pops up frequently enough to make this a viable suggestion.

In 2017 the Hartwell Downtown Development Authority was forced to abandon efforts to save the decaying historic structure. Its advanced state of disrepair made it an insurance liability for any potential buyers. A victim of demolition by neglect, the Candler-Linder House was stripped of its decorative details and any salvageable woodwork. Some of the reclaimed heart pine floorboards were purchased and installed in Atlanta’s historic Glenn House in Inman Park, a beautiful turn of events given Buddie’s ties to the Inman Park neighborhood, and given that Buddie’s older brother Howard lived at the Glenn House for a period of time.

Witham Cotton Mill and Mill Village

Witham Cotton Mill, built in 1894, no longer stands in the city of Hartwell. While many period structures can still be found around town, including the original train depot, passenger platform, remnants of rails, a roundtable, former warehouses, and the mill village, the site where the mill once stood is now a large commercial parking lot. Disagreement exists among various sources, some claiming that part of the mill still stands, but has been modified over the years to the point that it is no longer an historic structure. See the gallery below for a composite image showing the location and positioning of the mill, the mill village, and the Candler-Linder house.

The mill village, positioned to the south of the mill, consisted of cookie-cutter duplexes with identical layouts that were intended to house the workers. Additional single-family houses of better construction were built for supervisors and other mill management. Buddie occupied a boarding house when he first settled in Hartwell, but it is unlikely that he stayed there once he was married. Given that he didn’t receive the Candler-Linder house as a gift until 1902 and Helen’s parents did not welcome Buddie into their family, it’s plausible but impossible to confirm whether he resided in the mill village at any point.

The National Historic Register application includes robust details about the village’s construction and layout.

“Architecturally, the district is comprised of three distinct housing types dating from ca. 1894, when the mill was constructed, to the early 20th century. The majority are one- story frame dwellings which feature rear and front porches, two front entrances, a central chimney, a rectangular “saddlebag” plan, and a gabled roof which angles to enclose rooms at the rear of the residence. A variation on these one-story houses is a small group of two-story structures with salt box-like roof lines and small shed-roofed front porches protecting two central front entrances. A third type consists of a small group of Bungalow-style brick residences with front porches set to the side of the front facade, exposed rafter ends, and rectangular attic vents. At the north edge of the district, there are a few Victorian cottages of various designs which appear to have been incorporated into the mill village rather than constructed with the other mill housing stock. One of these has a fine sunburst design in its front-facing gable end.

These modest houses provide an excellent contrast in Hartwell to the more elaborate middle-class houses in town built during the same period. The two-family, wood-framed, weatherboarded housing units with their simple shed-roofed porches and double entrances are typical of much of Georgia’s mill housing. The one-story and two-story variations on what is basically the same housing unit are frequently found, as in the district, in the same mill village in order to provide a variety of living spaces for different size families. The single-family brick bungalows in the district, built in the early 20th century for supervisors and their families, serve to document the different living accommodations frequently provided within a mill village for mill management. The few small Victorian houses absorbed into the mill village as it was constructed contrast interestingly with the unrelenting sameness of the housing built by the mill for its workers. Although not much larger than some of the mill housing units, these small cottages have modest individual touches, an L-shaped plan with a bay window in one, a gable-end sunburst design in another.”

— Mill Village National Historic Registry application