West Point Commercial Historic District

Downtown West Point, on the Chattahoochee River at the Georgia-Alabama line, preserves a compact commercial district of mostly one- and two-story attached brick buildings dating from about 1870 into the mid-20th century. The town grew as a rail hub, where passengers and freight changed trains because of differing track gauges, and later as a trading center for nearby cotton mill villages. Notable buildings include the 1884 Lanier Building, which once held an opera house on its third floor until a 1920 tornado destroyed it, the 1890 Heyman-Merz Building, the 1907 Bank of West Point, and a 1932 Neoclassical Revival post office designed by Louis A. Simon. A 1940 Batson-Cook office was designed by architect Henry J. Toombs. Raised sidewalks recall repeated floods. The district was listed for its role in local commerce and for its representative collection of Commercial-style architecture, with buildings that also record the town's recovery from fires, floods and storms.