Historic Macon

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Above In 1925 the new City
Auditorium was dedicated as a
memorial to soldiers from Macon who
had served in World War I. It boasted
an auditorium which could seat sixtyfive
hundred people. Above the stage
was a mural painted by Don Carlos
DuBois and Wilbur Kurtz depicting
Macon’s history, 1540 to 1920. Above
it all was a copper dome said to have
been the largest in the world.
Below: In 1928 the growth of
Wesleyan College led to development
of a new campus, Greater Wesleyan,
at Rivoli on Macon’s outskirts. The
new site afforded more than 130 acres
for expansion and development, a
movement continuing in the twentyfirst
century.
A small event at the time, but one
what would change Macon greatly in later
years, was the introduction of the automobile
in 1901. Four steam-powered locomobiles
were brought to Macon for sale. They held
two people, had engines of five horsepower,
and traveled at speeds up to thirty miles
per hour.
In 1910 Macon bought its first automobile
fire engine. Within a month three firemen
were killed when a tire blew and the engine
crashed. Despite the accident, by 1913 all
horse-drawn engines had been replaced by selfpowered
ones.
Between 1900 and World War I the areas
of Vineville, Huguenin Heights, East Macon,
and South Macon were annexed into the
city. Macon’s city government provided new
and better services to the townspeople. It created
a Board of Health, added a public auditorium to
City Hall, and opened four supervised
playgrounds. All city parks were named and
marked with signs. The Macon Hospital added a
new wing and a school for nurses. Cherry Street
was the first to be lighted with electricity and
was called “The Great White Way.”
In 1916, after ruining cotton farms in other
parts of the south, the boll weevil arrived in
Georgia. New South leaders had tried for years
to get Georgia farmers to stop depending on
cotton and turn to other crops. The devastation
caused by the boll weevil made that happen.
Macon women were heard from in 1914. A
large crowd of them met at the new City Hall
Auditorium to hear Mrs. W. S. Stener of
Washington, D.C., demand the right to vote for
women. That year two Macon women—Mrs.
Robert Smith and her daughter, Miss Ruth
Smith—were in France when it was invaded by
Germany. They stayed to nurse the wounded in
the war.
During events leading to the First World War
Macon showed its military spirit. After a 1916
clash between United States’ troops and
Mexicans, Georgia’s governor from Macon, Nat
Harris, alerted the state’s National Guard.
The governor’s son, General Walter A. Harris,
headed the guard. He summoned it to train
in Macon at Camp Harris on the Forsyth
Road. Three companies of these Macontrained
troops went to duty in Texas. They
returned to Camp Harris in January, 1917.
That same month General Leonard Wood
came to Georgia looking for a site for an
army training camp. He chose Holly Bluff,
48 ✦ HISTORIC MACON