White Hall Mansion – UGA 2501 (1892, Category 1). White Hall Mansion is a large Romanesque residence that features Victorian and Gothic influences. The mansion was built in 1892 near the mill village of Whitehall by John Richards White, owner of a nearby mill. It was designed by University of Georgia Professor Charles M. Strahan. It now serves as a reception center for the School of Forest Resources. The mansion was rehabilitated and listed in the National Register of Historic Places in the 1970s. It retains integrity and is assessed as a Category 1 resource. The nomination notes:
... architecturally, as one of Georgia's most magnificent Queen Anne/Eclectic-style structures from the late Victorian Era; in local history as the home of factory owner and, banker, John Richards White, one of Athens’ and Clarke County’s most important citizens, and in landscape architecture for its combination of English style of landscape gardening with late Victorian architecture. White Hall is a superior example of lateVictorian architecture in Georgia. Its design combines aspects of the Queen Anne and Richardsonian Romanesque styles on the exterior with relatively open planning and layout on the interior. Its construction is substantial masonry. Quality materials, fine craftsmanship, and careful attention to details of finish are in evidence throughout. The landscaped setting is historically appropriate and enhances the overall appearance of the house. The exterior of White Hall features the irregular massing of large geometric forms and the picturesque piling of minor elements characteristic of the Queen Anne style, yet with a massive overall quality that bespeaks the contemporary Richardsonian Romanesque style. The large geometric masses constituting the house, although run together to some extent, are for the most part discrete, another hallmark of Richardsonian Romanesque design. What sets this house apart from ordinary, run-of-the-mill Victorian architecture is the way in which the overall massing is organized by an overriding design principle, a hierarchy in three dimensions—in plan and elevation, from the center of the house outward, from the hip-roofed central mass through the flanking wings to the ells and porches—a hierarchy of height, depth, and scale. This hierarchy can best be illustrated by the sequence of masses from the main hip-roofed central mass with its gabled projection through the southwest wing to the semi-cylindrical tower at its end, and the corresponding sequence of rooflines from the large front gable through the closed pediment dormer and the smaller hip roofed dormer to the conical roof of the semi-cylindrical tower. Similar sequences are to be found on the other side of the house. This hierarchy of height, depth, and scale is held together by a carefully studied, evenly balanced asymmetry in the massing, by the long, low front porch, by the consistent use of details such as continuous stringcourses and uniform window sizes.
