Berry-Powell-Berry Clinic/Old Villa Rica Library
Introduction
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Images
Old Villa Rica Library 2003 used as part of a display for the Gold Rush festival showing threatened and lost buildings. Photograph by Ernest Everett Blevins, MFA.
Backstory and Context
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On the 1923 and 1933 Sanborn (listed as 300 Chambers Street) a plus shaped house is shown in the center of the lot with porches on southwest corner squaring out the house on Carroll Street. A wrap around porch was on the on the northeast corner. There is also an outbuilding located on the west side of the lot. In 1944 the lot is vacant.
One third interest in the lot was sold by Robert L. Berry to John E. Powell, Sr on 18 January 1947. In 1951 the International style building was built as the Powell-Berry-Powell Clinic which on 6 February 1958 the shares of interest of the partners were sold to West Georgia Associates, Inc. (It is an undocumented hypothesis that this is a legal merger of the three men previously mentioned). This structure was the earliest International style building in West Georgia and predated the old Douglasville Courthouse which is on the National Register of Historic Places by about 6 years.
The exterior walls were stucco exterior walls with exposed brick on the lower 3 feet +/-. The roof is flat covered with tar and gravel. Interior the walls are sheetrock with Celotex ceiling finishing. The building sits on a reinforced concrete slab covered with vinyl tile. The building has central heating and air conditioning.
When the new library was built in the 1970s, the old one became a doctor’s office and clinic. It is now unclear exactly when the office was converted to be the new city library but it is believed to be to be done by 1976 when a the library is mentioned in Anderson’s History of Villa Rica [The City of Gold]. The new library was built west of town ca. 1985 and it is believed then is when this building reverted back to a medical office and the Villa Rica office of the Carroll County Health Department. It also has the county service program housed in it until 2004.
The city of Villa Rica demolished the structure in December 2007 while early versions of the National Register Nomination was researched and written.