This tavern is illustrated in John Linley’s The Architecture of Middle Georgia: The Oconee Area and though I’ve traveled through Wrightsville often in the past decade, I didn’t know it was still standing until recently. Linley didn’t have much information on the structure, but Donald Smith writes:
| The Grice Inn, the home of the Johnson County Historical Society since its organization in 1977 is one of Wrightsville’s most historic structures. The two-story brick and wood frame structure located on east Elm street was built in the spring of 1906 by John Robert Grice. Mr. Grice, born in 1857 was a carpenter, brick mason, furniture maker, architect and man of God. He first married Lucinda Walker and owned a farm on Cedar Creek near Donovan. He had 3 sons Milo, Cleo and Norma Lee. Lucinda died abt 1895 and John then married Rebecca Hartley. In 1900 he bought property from the deacons of Brown Memorial Baptist Church. The timber used to build this house was cut from his farm on Cedar Creek and laid to cure for a year. Where John came up with the design for the house is unknown. There was nothing else like it around. This pattern of gabled ends rising above a larger 4 sided slope atop a rectangular main section along with wide galleries around recessed exterior walls and a first floor of brick top with a second story of wood is thought to be a Gulf Coast style of the 18th century. This style originated by the French and Spanish settlers in Louisiana, was designed to keep the house cool. Dirt was dug out of the hillside by hand at this place known to residents of Wrightsville as the “knob”. Grice and his sons built the house themselves. He also had an adjoining park as a resort for young folks. The house was built for a residence but the Grice’s, who already had a reputation for good food, turned it into a boarding house in 1907 for students of the Nannie Lou Warthen Institue, which was going strong at the time. Quickly John became known as Daddy Grice. In 1907 he tiled the sidewalk in front of the house, probably the first such sidewalk in the city. The house is on the National Register and shares this distinction only with the court house. |
National Register of Historic Places
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