Stevens Street Historic District

Stevens Street Historic District is a neighborhood of houses, churches, a school and recreation buildings just northwest of downtown Thomasville, Georgia. Its grid of streets was laid out in 1853, and a few white families built homes along the ridge of Stevens Street. After the Civil War, freed people from Thomasville and nearby counties settled the low-lying land, which white residents considered undesirable because of creeks and a railroad completed in 1868. Segregation limited where Black residents could live, so the community built its own institutions, including Good Shepherd Episcopal Church, built in 1894. Shotgun, saddlebag and hall-parlor houses sit alongside Craftsman bungalows, showing laborers and a growing middle class living in the same area. A 1938 concrete bridge, remaining alleys and dirt roads, and the railroad alignment also survive. The district was listed for its ethnic heritage, community development, architecture, education and religion, with significance running from about 1850 to 1951.