Pelham Commercial Historic District

Downtown Pelham, in Mitchell County, Georgia, contains a compact district of about 13 acres filled with one- and two-story brick commercial buildings dating from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Storefronts share party walls along a slightly irregular grid of streets, and details include cast-iron columns, plate glass, terra cotta and corbeled cornices. Landmarks include the four-story Hand Trading Company, built in 1916 by the Atlanta firm Walker and Chase, the Neoclassical Carnegie Library of 1908, two railroad depots, brick warehouses and a historic hotel. The district matters as a typical Wiregrass railroad town center, grown up around a flag station on the railroad finished in 1868. Judson L. Hand, a sawmill and naval stores operator who became the first mayor, platted the town and built a commissary into the Hand Trading Company, said to be the world's largest rural department store. The commercial area has changed little since his death in 1916.