Lexington Historic District

Lexington, the seat of Oglethorpe County in northeast Georgia, was founded around 1796 and became incorporated in 1806. The historic district takes in most of the town's streets and more than 200 acres. It includes plain-style frame houses, several that were later updated with Greek Revival columns and porticos, Victorian residences, two 19th-century churches, a brick jail from about 1879 and a Richardsonian Romanesque-influenced courthouse from about 1887. Commercial buildings face the courthouse along Main Street, and smaller cottages line Boggs Street and Black Bottom Road. In the early 1800s the town was a political, legal and commercial center, home at various times to figures such as William Harris Crawford, George Gilmer and the Lumpkin family. When the Georgia Railroad bypassed the town in the 1840s, growth slowed, and much of the older building stock survived. The district was listed for this concentration of preserved 19th-century architecture and its associations with prominent Georgians.