Treanor House – UGA 1657 (1848–1849, Category 1). Treanor House, also referred to as the Cobb-Treanor House, is individually listed in the National Register of Historic Places for its architecture and landscape design, and as a surviving example of an antebellum home in Athens, Georgia. Located at 1234 South Lumpkin Street, Treanor House is a large, symmetrical wood framed Greek Revival plantation home, square in plan, with a full-width, two-story Gothic Revival portico across the front that is supported by slim attenuated columns that divide the porch into seven bays, suggesting an eclectic treatment.
As noted in the National Register nomination for the property, the Treanor House:
. . . brings together the two major revivalistic styles of the early-nineteenth century in a manner that anticipated the eclecticism of the later-nineteenth century. The Treanor House is, thus, an interesting and relatively rare amalgam of mid-nineteenth-century architectural styles and movements. And yet, although there are few others like it in the state, in nearby Oglethorpe County there is a nearly identical house (the Edwards-Byrd-Haston House), and in William Columbus Davis’s The Columns of Athens (1951) there are several documented instances of a similar eclectic melding of seemingly disparate styles of mid-century, all of which suggests that the Treanor House was part of a larger movement rather than an idiosyncrasy. Indeed, one might say that the attenuated columns of the front portico of the Treanor House represent an important vernacular expression of the mid-nineteenth-century Gothic style developing in Georgia against the earlier and more pervasive Greek Revival background.
The front facade is three bays wide and symmetrically arranged around a centered front doorway on the ground floor and a centered balcony and doorway on the second floor. Exterior brick chimneys are symmetrically placed at each end of the house; these have been stuccoed potentially due to vulnerable brick. The frame building has been added onto in the rear. The exterior is clad with wood siding and the roof is standing seam metal.
The house was a private residence associated with members of the Cobb, Rutherford, and Lipscomb families, all well-known in the community. Mildred Rutherford served as principal of the Lucy Cobb Institute. The building was acquired by the University in 1987.295
The house is set back on the lot and accessed via an entrance drive and walk. The landscape around the house continues to convey a nineteenth century character due to the presence of large oak, holly, magnolia, and needled evergreen trees.
Lawn also surrounds the house, including in the rear where traces of an earlier formal garden remain in evidence.296 The Treanor House retains a high degree of integrity and may be individually eligible for listing in the National Register. It is assessed as Category 1.
