Goodwyn-Bailey House

About this property

The Goodwyn-Bailey House at 2295 Old Poplar Rd. in Newnan, Georgia, was built in 1835. Also known as Catalpa Plantation, it includes Greek Revival architecture. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992. The listing included five contributing buildings and one contributing site on 100 acres (40 ha). This home was the 1991 Winner of the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation's Honor Award. The Goodwyn homeplace is one of the few remaining examples of the antebellum plantation houses that were once numerous in Coweta County. Time, neglect, fire, and ill-directed remodeling have taken a heavy toll on Coweta's early homes. The Goodwyn home was built by a Virginia family of substantial means. Many families from Virginia came to Coweta in the 1830s and 1840s and settled near each other in the eastern districts. The Goodwyns included Anne Dance Goodwyn, widow of Burwell Goodwyn of Brunswick County, Virginia, and her children, Thomas, Ann Eliza, Napoleon, Sarah, James, and Henry (and possibly others). The family settled in the Poplar Road area and remained there until after the turn of the century. The administrator of Burwell Goodwyn's estate petitioned that Goodwyn "left real and personal property worth some considerable sum..." The quality of the home Thomas constructed after their arrival is testimony to the family's wealth. Few homes were built in Coweta in the 1840s (less than twenty years after the lottery opening the territory) of the size and detail found in the Goodwyn home. The homeplace remained in the family until 1900. It continued to be a well-kept home, but was not well-preserved. Numerous architectural changes and some structural ones ere made to the house over the years. Finally an absentee owner assured that the property would fall into disrepair through thirty years of tenants and vandalism. As the house stood vacant in the mid-1980s, many felt that the property was beyond saving. In 1986, the property was purchased by Rod Smith. Mr. Smith immediately began extensive research on the home and the family. The house retained its original mantels, panelled wainscot, double panelled doors, plaster, floors, fluted square Doric columns, chimneys, and basic floor plan. An exhaustive study of the home revealed that numerous changes had been made to the original structure over the years. These included the removal of the old stairway rising from the rear of the stair hall, it being replaced by an early 20th century stair facing the front of the hallway. A full one-story front porch was added incorporating the original columns. Second floor rear windows were closed off and another upstairs room was added. The original cookhouse was removed and a new kitchen was added.

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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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