About Quizzes

Church-Waddel-Brumby House Museum

Church-Waddel-Brumby House Museum is a historical building located at 280 East Dougherty Street in Athens, Georgia. The Unified Government of Athens-Clarke County owns the house, which is administered by the Athens-Clarke Heritage Foundation. Believed to be the oldest surviving house in Athens, this Federal-style house was built by Alonzo Church - a mathematics professor at the University of Georgia – in 1820. The first resident of the house was Dr. Moses Waddel, the then-UGA President, who resided here for nine years. The building was purchased by Mrs. Stephen Harris in 1834. Her family and their descendants - the Hardemans and the Brumbys - lived in the house until their deaths in the mid-1960s. When the city's urban renewal plan threatened demolition of the house in that decade, concerned citizens formed the Athens-Clarke Heritage Foundation, Inc., and moved the house a short distance (an eighth of a mile) from its original location, in 1967. The restoration process was carried out by the city of Athens and the Heritage Foundation with assistance from the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, in 1971. The new structure represents the original compact nucleus of the sprawling house that it had become. This two-story dwelling features a two-over-two room, central hall plan, one room deep, built on an eight-post frame. The house features an unusual soffit molding consisting of beveled-edge blocks of wood drilled with lines of holes. In addition to an elliptical fanlight, flanking sidelights that terminate in a round arch give distinction to the entrance; most sidelights of the period were square headed. The interior stairway and the front porch are reconstructions of original features. Today, the Church-Waddel-Brumby House serves as the Athens Welcome Center and house museum, furnished with period antiques. The house museum is filled with brochures, maps, souvenirs, and gifts for sale and is the headquarters for guided bus tours of Athens. The Church-Waddel-Brumby House was placed on the National Register of Historic Places, in 1975, and locally designated as a Historic Landmark in 1988.