Tour offers historic look of Classic City

David Manning

A bush flowers in front of a house in the Henderson Avenue Historic District recently.

David Manning

Native Athenian John Whitehead gives a tour of the historic district.

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A young girl stands near the Henderson Avenue Historic District sign.

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A house in the Henderson Avenue Historic District last month.

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If you go...

Athens Heritage Walks
Next one: University of Georgia North Campus/Old Athens Cemetery, with Nash Boney, July 30.
When: Tours run now through November
Cost: $12 ACHF members, $15 non-members
Call: (706) 353-1801
Online: Visit www.achfonline.org for a complete list of Athens Heritage Walks

It's a scorching morning: 95 degrees, and only 10 a.m. The hosts offer what they can to help their guests forget the heat: mimosas served by Peggy Galis on her porch, poured from silver pitchers into immediately-sweating glasses; wide-brimmed hats pulled from Joan Bertsch's closet and handed out to the ladies in the group.

The group is about 20 tour-goers, mostly Athenians; the tour is of the Henderson Avenue Historic District, off Milledge, part of the Athens-Clarke Heritage Foundation's "Athens Heritage Walks" series, which started last month.

The series was designed in response to Athens' designation as one of the National Trust for Historic Preservation's 2009 Dozen Distinctive Destinations. The designation, which came in January, is awarded to communities that "offer an authentic visitor experience by combining dynamic downtowns, cultural diversity, attractive architecture, cultural landscapes and a strong commitment to historic preservation and revitalization," according to the National Trust. Among Southern cities, Athens made this year's list alongside Franklin, Tenn., and Fort Worth, Texas.

Of course, making a list alone doesn't guarantee people will pay attention. So the Athens-Clarke Heritage Foundation put together a series of guided walking tours (with exceptions - a canoe tour is one) to showcase what makes Athens so "distinctive."

"This tour series will provide an opportunity to explore the amazing historic resources that we have," says Athens-Clarke Heritage Foundation trustee Amy Adams. "We are able to enjoy the sites that comprise the tour series because our community thought it was in the public's interest to preserve them."

That's true for the residents of Henderson Avenue, the tour for which is led by neighborhood resident John Whitehead. Whitehead's concern for historic preservation is evident as he guides tourists down the street where no houses have been built, torn down or moved to since 1938. In other words, it looks almost exactly the way it did when Whitehead was a little boy.

Whitehead is professor emeritus of history at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, but his far-off career didn't prevent him from returning to his childhood home at 236 Henderson Ave. On the tour, he is largely a historian, carefully outlining the dates and owners of each house. But Whitehead offers a different perspective from someone whose knowledge of the area comes from public records alone.

"I don't think there's anyone else on the street who came before the mid-'70s," he says of his family's longtime residency. "I knew some of the families" who owned and built these houses. "A lot of people had lived there for 60 years."

Adams says ACHF executive director Amy Kissane came up with the idea for the tours, and together they drafted a list of potential guides. "An important tour concept was that the guides would be as distinctive as the sites, and we actually began with the guides," Adams says. "We wrote a list of the most fascinating, engaging and colorful people we could think of."

From that list, ACHF came up with 13 tours to be held over the next six months, led by 15 guides. While many of them explore neighborhoods that helped Athens make the "Distinctive Destinations" list, some are less expected.

"We wanted to feature some unique sites that haven't been the subject of a prior community tour, such as the University of Georgia's Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, the canoe tour on the Oconee River, Winterville and the Southern Piedmont Farming Tour," Adams says. "Some of these aren't true walking tours, but what they do have in common is an intimate experience on a unique historical subject with an excellent tour guide."

Giving tour-goers access to places that typically are hard to visit is one strength of the series. The Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library tour, for example, will allow archive enthusiasts a chance to see such rare items as the book bound in human skin along with photos and maps of Athens long ago.

The North Oconee River tour, led by Flagpole Magazine's city editor Ben Emanuel and Athens Welcome Center tour guide Janet Clark, will see the two sharing a canoe and floating down river while narrating Athens' once-booming milling history. A tour of the Navy Supply Corps/Normal School requires advance registration, as security concerns limit access to the campus, making a visit a rare privilege.

The neighborhood tours hit some of Athens' oldest residential areas: Boulevard, Cobbham, Milledge Circle and Springdale.

For his part, Whitehead, an Athens High graduate and ardent public education supporter, has seen the exodus and return of families to Henderson Avenue, and hopes the tours will help people see the value of maintaining these old districts and investing in community. "I would hope they would sense that some in-town neighborhoods are very fascinating," he says. "It's so convenient and so close to things (people) want to do: just a walk from school or college or restaurants. It's the allure that you can live right in the middle of town."

Originally published in the Athens Banner-Herald on Sunday, July 12, 2009