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James D. "Nubby" Coleman, principal broker for Rives S. Brown Realtors, give a presentation at Lake Lanier in the City. |
Friday, May 9, 2008
By KIM BARTO - Bulletin Staff Writer
The stately architecture and lush greenspace of the Druid Hills/Forest Park area did not happen by accident — it took planning and foresight to turn a 2,000-acre farm into the parklike residential neighborhood it is today.
In a presentation on “The History of Lanier Farms” on Thursday, James “Nubby” Coleman, principal broker for Rives S. Brown Realtors, told how the land was transformed over the last century.
He showed historical blueprints, old photos and letters to members of the audience, many of whom have lived in the area for decades.
The talk, held outside the Lake Lanier boathouse, was the latest in the New College Institute’s Non-Credit Lecture Series.
“It’s the parks and the greenways that make this place special,” Coleman said. “This area takes a lot of effort by a lot of people.”
Patrick Henry once walked this land, said Henry County Archivist Desmond Kendrick. Patrick Henry owned the area in the late 18th century and sold it to David Lanier.
“Lanier got this land in several different tracts,” Kendrick said. “Some came from Patrick Henry’s wife, some from his daughter.”
Coleman picked up the story a century later, when Henry Clay Lester bought the Lanier Farm Tract from Annie W. and Rorer James of Danville for $10,690.
“Henry Clay Lester was probably the wealthiest man in Henry County at the time,” Coleman said, and his money came from tobacco, railroads and banking.
Lester married Lucy Clark Brown, or “Big Lucy,” and they had no children of their own, Coleman said. However, Lucy’s niece and nephew came to live with them: “Little Lucy” and Rives Brown Sr.
It was Rives Brown Sr. who eventually inherited the land and started the development.
“Until 1922, all this property was a working farm,” Coleman said. “They had livestock, hogs, you name it.”
Brown shut down the farm, and the first homes along Mulberry Road started to be built in 1925. In the mid-1930s, he wanted to create a master plan for Druid Hills and Forest Park, Coleman said. When the project became too big for him alone, Brown enlisted the aid of renowned landscape architect and town planner Earle Sumner Draper.
Draper created an intricate plan of meandering streets and trails, and the area began to be developed in 1938, Coleman said.
Then, DuPont built its plant on Horseshoe Bend in Henry County around 1940 and further spurred development.
“DuPont was the reason it took off,” Coleman said. “Because of all the young executives coming in, there was a lot of building in this area around Hunting Ridge.”
Three major architects built the homes from the 1930s and ’40s: Coates Carter, Bryant Heard and William Roy Wallace. Carter’s hand can be seen in many of the homes on Sam Lions Trail, for example, Coleman said.
Wallace’s trademark was the two-story Georgian Colonial style, with Flemish Bond brickwork and extended windows, Coleman said.
The dam to create Lake Lanier, now the centerpiece of the neighborhood, was developed in 1956, Coleman said. Then in November 1958, the area was annexed into the city.
Many attendees remembered the land before it was developed.
“When I was growing up, my friends and I used to ride out on our ponies to what was then the farm,” said Ruth Jones Bassett, who grew up in a home designed by Coates Carter and still lives in the neighborhood.
“We all had stables in our backyards,” she added. “The paved road stopped just after Bonnie Stone’s house, and it was a dirt road all the way out to Forest Park Country Club. Those are some of my fondest memories — galloping out that dirt road.”
Coleman told anecdotes about Rives Brown Sr. and Jr., describing the elder as serious and dignified and the younger as more outgoing.
When former Martinsville city manager Julian Hirst moved to Norfolk in the mid-1960s, Rives Brown Jr. gave him a square foot of land “because (Hirst) always wanted to have a ‘foot’ in Martinsville-Henry County,” Coleman said.
Coleman said he became interested in the area’s history over the years, perhaps because he has married into both sides of the families responsible for its development.
His first wife, Lucy, was Rives Brown Jr.’s daughter, and they had two children. Coleman became a widower in 1981, and in 1989 he married Beverley Lester, with whom he has three children. She is the great-great-niece of Henry Clay Lester. |
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