McDonough Historic District

McDonough's historic core is a T-shaped district in the center of Henry County, Georgia, laid out on a gridiron around the courthouse square. The square holds the 1897 Richardsonian Romanesque courthouse, a Confederate monument dedicated in 1910, and oak shade trees. Around it stand attached one- and two-story brick stores, many built by local businessman H. P. Copeland, with corbelled brickwork typical of the turn of the 20th century. Residential streets extend in several directions, with Queen Anne, Classical Revival, Craftsman, English Vernacular Revival and ranch houses, plus a small African-American neighborhood and city cemetery. Churches include Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist and Shiloh Baptist congregations. Founded in 1823, the town declined for decades after a railroad bypassed it in 1846, then revived when a rail line reached it in 1881. The district preserves the buildings from that recovery, along with the early Globe Hotel and Brown House, and later examples such as a 1950 service station and an International Style grocery.