9 Prettiest Main Streetscapes In Georgia

In Georgia, a good-looking main street is really an old act of hospitality. Generations of townspeople saved the handsomest block for the spot where everyone gathered. They set the courthouse columns by the square and the shade trees over the sidewalks. The result in Rome is a Broad Street built as wide as a plaza. In Watkinsville, Main Street is crowded with potters and galleries. On all nine of these streets, the prettiest view and the busiest corner line up. That is why each one pays you back best on foot.

Rome, Georgia

Start with the width of the street. Broad Street cuts a generous line through downtown Rome, and the extra room lets people spill out onto the sidewalks between the two-story brick storefronts. Baristas pull shots, boutique owners hang new stock, and one shop pours olive oil tastings for anyone who wanders in. Up on its own hill, the red-brick Clock Tower has watched over all of it since 1871, back when the city built it to hold water rather than tell time. Down at street level, a bronze Capitoline Wolf sits in front of City Hall, a 1929 gift from Italy that almost never lacks for someone taking its picture. Walk a few minutes to the Town Green and the fountains there trace the three rivers that meet at the edge of downtown, the Etowah, the Oostanaula, and the Coosa. For the widest view of the whole scene, climb to Myrtle Hill and look back over the rooftops and the water below.

Toccoa, Georgia

The heart of Toccoa is a train depot, and that says a lot about the town. Restored in its 1915 form, the depot still holds its platform near the rail line, and inside it the Currahee Military Museum tells the story of Camp Toccoa. More than 18,000 paratroopers trained here during World War II, among them the men of Easy Company that a later generation met through Band of Brothers. From the depot, brick sidewalks lead past the shops to the Ritz Theatre, a 1939 movie house the city brought back for films and live shows. Galleries and specialty stores fill the blocks in between, the kind you browse without a plan. Just outside town, Toccoa Falls drops 186 feet on the campus of Toccoa Falls College, a short walk from the entrance. Every fall, the Currahee Military Weekend fills these same streets with a run up the mountain and reenactors in period uniform.

Watkinsville, Georgia

Locals call Watkinsville the Artland of Georgia, and one walk down Main Street explains the name. The strip packs in more galleries than you expect for a town this size, shared among antique dealers, working potters, and a handful of small restaurants. At the center stands the Eagle Tavern, a stagecoach stop from around 1801 that now serves as a museum and welcome center. Directly across the street, the Oconee County Courthouse has faced the tavern in one form or another for well over a century. Step off Main and the Oconee Cultural Arts Foundation runs shows and a well-loved fall pottery market out of the old high school. When you need a break from the shops, Harris Shoals Park adds a creek and a shaded picnic ground within easy walking distance.

Newnan, Georgia

You notice the dome first. The Coweta County Courthouse rises over the Newnan square with a cupola that stands roughly 100 feet above the street, and a four-faced clock still marks the hour across the district from its 1904 tower. People here call Newnan the City of Homes, and the streets just off the square earn the nickname with block after block of antebellum and Victorian houses in one of the state's larger historic districts. Shops and restaurants ring the courthouse, some long-running, some newer cafes that have found their footing. The dome itself carries 13,500 pounds of copper, which catches the last light above the rooftops on a clear evening.

LaGrange, Georgia

The middle of LaGrange belongs to a Frenchman. A circular fountain and a bronze of the Marquis de Lafayette hold the center of the red-brick walk that locals know as Lafayette Square, a tribute to the general who lent the town its name. The statue is a cast copy of one in Le Puy, France, set here in the 1970s. Around the square, restored storefronts hold boutiques, a soda counter, and restaurants, with the newer Wild Leap Brew Co. among them. A block away, the Legacy Museum on Main covers west Georgia's past, with exhibits on Creek history and an early covered-bridge replica. On the edge of town, the Callaway family's Italian villa and formal gardens open to visitors at Hills and Dales Estate, some of the beds worked since the 1830s. Come in spring and the square shows its best color, when the crepe myrtles and roses bloom around the fountain.

Eatonton, Georgia

Give Eatonton credit for its sheer elbow room. The town square ranks among Georgia's largest, wide enough to give the brick blocks around it real space to breathe, with the columned Putnam County Courthouse holding the middle since the early 1900s. Family-run antique stores and boutiques ring the square, the sort of places that reward an afternoon with nowhere to be. A block off the square, the Georgia Writers Museum honors three authors with local roots, among them Joel Chandler Harris and Alice Walker. Nearby in Turner Park, the Uncle Remus Museum sits inside historic cabins hung with scenes from the Br'er Rabbit tales Harris wrote down. Eatonton also sits between Lake Oconee and Lake Sinclair, so a morning on the square leads naturally to an afternoon on the water.

Madison, Georgia

Madison is the town Sherman is said to have found too handsome to burn. The story is more legend than fact, yet one walk down the magnolia-shaded main street shows why it stuck. Antebellum and Victorian storefronts line the avenue, and the Beaux-Arts dome of the Morgan County Courthouse has risen over the square since 1905, its columns colossal. A few steps off the square, Heritage Hall runs tours of its 1811 Greek Revival rooms through the town's early years. Nearby, the Madison-Morgan Cultural Center occupies an 1895 Romanesque schoolhouse, with galleries, a restored Victorian classroom, and a performance hall inside. Nearly 100 antebellum homes line the streets in every direction, one of the largest such collections in the state. When you want more room, Hard Labor Creek State Park in nearby Rutledge adds trails, lakes, and picnic grounds a short drive from the square.

Cuthbert, Georgia

Cuthbert saved its best building, and the square is better for it. The 1880s Randolph County Courthouse presides over the middle of town with a stepped gable and a tower that rises from a pyramid into a slender cone. Restored after years of hard use, it now serves as the county welcome center and remains the clear landmark for miles. Storefronts from around 1890 still ring the square, and many of the shops inside them keep to the original buildings. A few blocks away, Andrew College opened in 1854 on the strength of the second-oldest charter in the country that let a school grant degrees to women. Cuthbert also gave American music one of its architects in Fletcher Henderson, the band leader who helped shape the big band sound. Each year, the Fletcher Henderson Jazz Festival brings his music back to the streets where he grew up.

Brunswick, Georgia

Brunswick planned its downtown before the Revolution, and the plan still holds. Surveyors laid out the grid of shaded squares in 1771 on the same model as nearby Savannah, and Newcastle and Gloucester streets still carry most of the storefronts. Many blocks keep the colonial names the founders chose, Hanover and Prince among them, across a district that holds 14 small green squares a local group has spent years restoring. At the south end of Newcastle Street, Old City Hall stands with a Romanesque face and a clock tower finished in 1889. Down at the water, shrimp boats unload at Mary Ross Waterfront Park against a backdrop of salt marsh. A few streets south at Albany and Prince, Lover's Oak throws its limbs wide, a live oak old enough to count its age in centuries. End the day looking out over the Marshes of Glynn, the tidal flats that gave the poet Sidney Lanier his best-known lines.

Georgia At Walking Pace

The pull of these nine downtowns comes from the same source. Madison opens onto a courthouse square shaded by magnolias, Cuthbert onto a tower shaped like a cone, and Rome onto three rivers at once. Some hand you a jazz festival or a spring square full of crepe myrtle in bloom. The bet their founders made still holds, that a town's best-looking street should be the one everybody uses. Park the car in any of them and you collect on it the same way, on foot.