Penfield Historic District

Penfield is a nineteenth-century Georgia town seven miles north of Greensboro, built around the grounds of the former Mercer University. Georgia Baptists chose the site in the 1820s, and Mercer Institute opened there in 1833 with 39 students, becoming Mercer University by act of the legislature in 1837. The campus slope still holds the 1846 Chapel, with its Doric portico and bell tower, the 1853 Science Hall, and the 1857 President's House. Several other college buildings have been lost. Mercer moved to Macon by 1871, and much campus land passed to private owners. Around the campus are a Female Academy founded in 1838, a Presbyterian church from 1876, brick commercial buildings, a cemetery containing Jesse Mercer's grave, and houses from the 1840s onward. Their styles run from plantation plain to Greek Revival and early Victorian cottages. The district was listed for its role in early Georgia education and its intact mid-nineteenth-century character.