Lanier County Auditorium and Grammar School

Two brick-and-concrete school buildings on East Church Avenue in Lakeland, Georgia, an auditorium and a grammar school, were completed by August 1925 to designs by Valdosta architect Lloyd Greer. Each is one story over a raised basement, with recessed arched entryways, keystones, quoins and modified hipped roofs. The auditorium keeps its original seating for 600, its stage platform that also serves as a gymnasium, and a beam ceiling. The grammar school has a central hall with eight classrooms. They were built after Lanier County was created in 1920 and its city and county schools were consolidated, which left the existing Oaklawn Academy building overcrowded. The auditorium also served as the town's main meeting space for civic events and community theater. When the academy building burned in 1950, these two buildings became the only survivors of the original three-building campus. Their design blends Georgian Revival features with a freer, early twentieth century approach, and they are the last physical record of the county's first consolidated school system.