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Founded in Fall 1856, the same year the old Jackson Street Cemetery closed its gates, the historic Oconee Hill Cemetery&nbsp;overlooks the Oconee River and can be seen from&nbsp;Sanford Stadium and the University of Georgia campus. This cemetery&nbsp;is listed on the&nbsp;National Register of Historic Places and is&nbsp;one of the oldest cemeteries in Athens.&nbsp;The Oconee Hill Cemetery is the resting place of many famous individuals who were pivotal in the founding of this city. Many of their names&nbsp;names can be seen all over campus and town. Other notables that are buried on these grounds&nbsp;include Crawford Long who is best known as the father of anesthesia, Ben Epps, who built and flew the first airplane in Georgia, Ricky Wilson who was the lead guitarist for the Athens band, the B-52's, Young L.G. Harris, the name sake of Young Harris College&nbsp;and former Governor of Georgia, Wilson Lumpkin.<br>&nbsp;Once inside of the cemetery, visitors will encounter a water trough that was used when individuals would visit the cemetery on horseback. Other landmarks that can be found in the cemetery include a&nbsp;memorial for unknown Confederate soldiers who were lost in combat, a World War One memorial&nbsp;and various identification&nbsp;markers that make finding sections of interest more easily accessible&nbsp;for visitors. When the cemetery was originally designed, it was segregated&nbsp;into sections by various&nbsp;religions and races.&nbsp;If looking for specific sections of the cemetery, detailed&nbsp;maps&nbsp; are provided at the Sexton House that show where to find these various&nbsp;places of interest. Some of the different sections that can be found in the Oconee Hill Cemetery&nbsp;are sections for: factory workers, African Americans, the Congregation Children of Israel and&nbsp;pauper sections.&nbsp;Throughout the cemetery, architectural styles such as Greek Revival, Gothic Revival, High Victorian Gothic, and Egyptian Revival can be seen in the many funerary markers&nbsp;found along the curving and meandering paths.&nbsp;Many of the large monuments&nbsp;along with more modest markers can be found dating back to the mid nineteenth century. The beauty and serenity of this site is something that is hard to put into words.&nbsp;

This historic cemetery was founded in 1856 as a replacement burial ground from the existing Historic Jackson Street Cemetery. This site is the resting place of many notable Athenians and Georgians. Located next to Sanford Stadium and the University of Georgia Athens campus, this site contains elaborate Victorian Style funerary markers and mausoleums that have withstood the test of time. This cemetery was designed following the Rural Cemetery Model and encompasses 99 acres.  Also on the cemetery grounds is the historic Sexton House, the George E. King Iron Truss bridge which was constructed in 1899 that links the older section of the cemetery to the newer section across the river and a well house build by the Bisson family of granite from their own quarry. 

Oconee Hill Cemetery

<p>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Robert Preston Brooks (1881-1961) was a remarkable man
and contributed so much to the University throughout his life. He saw the
university transform from an all-white and all-male institution to a co-ed and integrated
school. He lived through the Great Depression, two World Wars, the Korean War, and
the beginning of involvement with Vietnam. His time as an undergraduate
introduced him to many prominent Georgians as he was a member of ATO, part of
the tennis team, Sphinx honorary society, and editor of the Red &amp; Black.<br></p>

<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Joseph Neel Reid (1885-1926) was born in Jacksonville,
Alabama and later moved to Macon, Georgia. He was an apprentice with Curran
Ellis and worked for W. F. Denny, who had an integral part in the development
of Georgia architecture at the turn of the century. He studied at Columbia
University in New York and traveled to Paris to study more. He returned to
Atlanta and started a firm with Hentz and Norrman. After Norrman committed
suicide the firm was renamed to Hentz and Reid becoming the leading Beaux-Arts
architects in Atlanta. Adler would join the firm in 1911. </p>

<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In 1995, the building suffered a devastating fire that
destroyed the roof and extensively damaged &nbsp;the top three floors. It was the
biggest fire that county had ever seen; it took over 100 fire fighters and six
hours to extinguish. The building was evacuated, and no students or staff were
harmed, however, one firefighter was hospitalized due to heat and smoke and
another suffered a back injury. The fire was started accidentally in the attic
by men working on the roof. Graduate students lost research and professors lost
class materials. One single staff member was allowed access to recover
materials; he brought back six paintings, worth a considerable amount, that
were on loan the university museum. His ground floor office was a mess of
fallen ceiling tiles and soaked from putting out the fire. He was extremely
pleased he was able to recover the art. The restoration cost approximately $9.4
million and the roof was given a copper finish.</p>

Brooks Hall is home to the Terry College of Business. It completed construction in 1928 and expanded in 1972 as the business college grew. It was designed by Neel Reid, one of the most prominent residential architects in Atlanta. The building was originally called the Commerce-Journalism building but was renamed in 1974 for the business college’s first dean, Robert P. Brooks.

Brooks Hall

Throughout the era of segregation, this building served a dual purpose as well as a theater, the four story structure was the office of many African American professionals of the city including doctors, pharmacists, jewelers, dentists and barbers. Over the years the theater has hosted some of the most influential musicians&nbsp;such as Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith. <br><br>Morton Theater was later sold in 1973 only for the Morton Theatre Corporation buy the building in 1980. The theater was restored between 1987 and 1993 when it reopened thanks to donations and the support of taxpayers. Many of the leading modern bands and entertainers have performed at the theater, which now serves a diverse community but&nbsp;continues to remain a thriving center of Athens' Black business district.&nbsp;

One of the first and possibly the oldest surviving African American-operated theater in the United States, Morton Theater opened in 1910. The theater is named after Monroe Bowers "Pink" Morton, a wealthy African American who contributed greatly to the community of Athens. For many decades, the Morton building was the anchor of the Black entertainment district in Athens--a district that was known as the "Hot Corner" among its patrons and its critics within the Black community of Athens. Mr. Morton owned thirty other buildings and this theater was the largest of all of them. 

The Morton Theatre opened in 1910 and was restored thanks to a taxpayer-approved bond initiative that was approved in 1987.

Morton Theater 

<p>Athens High and Industrial School was the first school in Georgia to offer African Americans a four-year program. The school was originally known as Reese Street School, founded three years earlier in 1914. The name and structure change came in 1916-17 under the direction of Samuel F. Harris. The structure was quite modern for its time, as it included steam heating.</p><p>The school offered a full range of classes that were usually reserved for whites. These included literature, Latin, Greek, Chemistry, History, and Physics. The facility functioned as a high school during the day and would teach industrial classes during the evening for adults. The school would be moved in 1933 to the former site of the Knox Institute. The Know Institute was constructed in 1868 under the Freedman’s Bureau to educate formerly enslaved persons.</p><p>The school’s credit belongs to Samuel F. Harris who was the principal of AHIS from 1917 until his death in 1935. Harris would first start trying to set up an adult educational facility much earlier. When he was a professor of West Broad Street School in 1904, he tried to set up the same sort of training that would be offered at AHIS. The program failed due to lack of funds.</p><p>When Principal Harris fell ill, his Assistant Principal A.H. Burney would take his place. Mrs. Burney would leave her mark in various ways. She would continue to push Harris’s vision and cultivate students. These two would leave such a mark that later students and alumni would petition to have the school's name changed to Burney-Harris High School. This would occur after the school would move again to Dearing Extension.</p><p>The former Knox Institute building was demolished in the 1960s but is today recognized by this marker. The school was at this site for the longest before being moved to Dearing Extension and later fully integrated in 1970. For the marker to be constructed, the alumni spent years researching the school before submitting the application for the marker to the Georgia Historical Society.</p>

<p>Athens High and Industrial School became the first African American public school in Georgia to offer a four-year program. The school had a full curriculum of classes usually reserved for whites when it was opened in 1916-17. The school also taught adults industrial-style classes in the evening which was also progressive. Over the years, the school would undergo changes but would ultimately leave a lasting benefit for the community it served.</p>

The marker is on the corner of Reese and Pope

Athens High and Industrial School

<div>Candler Hall sits on the University of Georgia’s historic North Campus, located at 202 Herty Drive. Built at the turn of the twentieth century in 1901, one hundred sixteen years after the establishment of UGA, the hall overlooks Herty Field, where Georgia’s first football game was played on January 30, 1892. The building was named after Allen D. Candler, who served as the fifty-sixth Governor of Georgia from October 29, 1898 to October 25, 1902. Candler Hall is currently home to the School of Public and International Affairs, established in 2001. The building houses undergraduate advisement offices, the Department of International Affairs, and the Office of the Dean, Dr. Matthew R. Auer.&nbsp;</div><div>	Under Chancellor Walter Barnard Hill’s leadership in 1901, the University of Georgia received its first direct appropriation for maintenance from the state legislature for the amount of $22,500. Governor Candler helped convince the Georgia General Assembly to allot these funds, which were used to build his eponymous building as well as nearby Denmark Hall, which was originally a dining commons named after prominent Savannah businessman and UGA alumni Brantley A. Denmark. The construction of Candler was overseen by influential designer G. L. Norrman, leading to its Beaux-Arts architectural style and early nickname: Buckingham Palace.&nbsp;</div><div>	Upon opening, Candler Hall operated as a male dormitory and could house up to 84 students. One of these students, senior William S. Loyd accidentally shot and killed himself in 1905 while fiddling with a loaded pistol in his room on the first floor. The shocking and surreal nature of this incident led to pervasive rumors among students for most of the twentieth century that the building was haunted by Loyd’s ghost. During World War II, the United States Navy took control of several buildings on North Campus, including Candler Hall, for its Pre-Flight School, training approximately 18,000 aviators between June 1942 and September 1945. During the war, Candler Hall was renamed Yorktown Barracks and received significant internal renovations as part of this School. After the war, the building was once again a male dorm until 1956, when it became coeducational. For the next few years, it fluctuated between being coeducational, male, and female, depending on demand. Through the 1960s and 1970s, it was used indiscriminately as office and classroom space, and by the bicentennial of UGA in 1985, it housed the Institute of Higher Education. Candler Hall underwent a prestigious $3 million restoration between 2002 and 2003, which returned stairwells and ceilings back to their original locations and heights. Hardwood floors were installed, and the building’s 125 windows were also restored. Candler Hall was rededicated as the home of the School of Public and International Affairs on April 28, 2004, under UGA President Michael F. Adams.</div><div>	Born in Homer, Georgia, in 1834, Allen Daniel Candler never attended the University of Georgia, instead attending Mercer University in Macon. After college, he enlisted in the Confederate States Army in 1862 and reached the rank of colonel by 1864. He lost his left eye in the Battle of Jonesboro. After the war, he had an extensive career in politics, serving in the Georgia House of Representatives from 1873 to 1877, the Georgia State Senate from 1878 to 1879, the United States House of Representatives from 1883 to 1891, as Georgia Secretary of State from 1894 to 1898, and finally as Governor of Georgia from 1898 to 1902.&nbsp;</div><div>	During his gubernatorial tenure, he led the Democratic Party in defying the Fifteenth Amendment and holding a whites-only primary. In newspaper editorials, Candler expressed abhorrent racist and white supremacist views, writing that “enfranchisement of the Negro was a crime against civilization,” and, “no two races differing so widely as the Caucasian and the African, ever have or ever can live together in anything like equal numbers on terms of perfect equality. One race must dominate the other, and it is a matter of history that the Anglo-Saxon has never been dominated by any other race.” The most brutal lynchings in Georgia’s history occurred during his term, particularly the 1899 lynching of Sam Hose in Newnan, and Candler responded by publicly blaming the Black community and taking little to no action to quell white mob violence. He died in 1910 in Atlanta, and Candler County in East Georgia was also named after him in 1914.</div>

Candler Hall sits on the University of Georgia's historic North Campus. It is named after Allen D. Candler, the Governor of Georgia from 1898 to 1902. It was originally built in 1901. It currently houses the School of Public and International Affairs. 

Candler Hall following its 2004 dedication as the home of the School of Public and International Affairs.

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