About this property
Bonar Hall is an 1839–40 Georgian-style house in Madison, Georgia, one of the first of the grand-style homes built during the town's cotton-boom heyday, 1840–60. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972. The two-story brick townhouse was built by John Byne Walker, an early Morgan county pioneer, and his heiress bride, Eliza Fannin, half-sister of a war hero, James W. Fannin, Jr., the famous commander at the Goliad Massacre during the Texas Revolution after whom counties in Georgia and Texas are named. Their home sat on a large tract of land that she inherited from her father, Isham Fannin, one of the founders of Madison and Morgan County, he being on the first board of county officials who were, in turn, responsible for founding the town. The first bricks, made on John Byne's plantations, were laid on February 25, 1839, starting with the brick kitchen; all of the brickwork was finished by early July. They moved into their new home 10 months later. Designed by an unknown professional architect, the main house, known then as the John Byne Walker Townhouse, was originally a four-over-four traditional Georgian manor house with rooms 20’x 20’, eight fireplaces, 18"-thick walls, silver doorknobs and 13' ceilings. The Georgian-style house featured a small one-story portico with four white columns, with small brick "summer houses" on either side (now a tea house and an orangery) and, in back, a three-room brick kitchen flanked on either side by matching his and her brick “necessaries”. Today, the 13-acre (53,000 m2) estate includes, in addition, a two-room cabin originally from downtown Madison and one of the oldest buildings in the town (c. 1810–1815), a slave cabin (c. 1830), a tenant house (c. 1900), a classic 1880s Victorian carriage house, a 1920s log smoke house, and a working well. Of particular note is the classic formal boxwood garden dating from around 1850 and described in numerous books on historic gardens of the South.
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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).
Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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Questions about this property
When was Bonar Hall listed on the National Register?
Bonar Hall was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on January 20, 1972.
What type of historic resource is Bonar Hall?
Bonar Hall is classified as a building in the National Register of Historic Places.
What is the period of significance for Bonar Hall?
The period of significance for Bonar Hall is recorded as the early_republic era, specifically around 1839.
Can I research the history near Bonar Hall?
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