Historic Resources Survey Phase II: City of Toccoa, Georgia NW & NE Quadrants, 2017-2018

Executive Summary: "This report, Phase II of the City of Toccoa Historic Resource Survey, provides the summary results of an extended effort to assess the historic structures within a designated section of The City of Toccoa in Stephens County, Georgia. It includes a description of the survey process, methodology, and any and all recommendations that resulted from the project's findings. Phase II was completed on August 27, 2018. The project began in December 2017 with the review of the Stephens County Tax Assessors records to identify properties forty (40) years of age or older in the Northwest and Northeast Quadrants survey area. Detailed, color coded maps that identified the historic properties according to the decade built were then produced to aid in the field survey of the two quadrants in Toccoa. Survey word began in January 2018 and utilizing these maps as a guide, the Georgia, Natural, Archaeological and Historic Resources Geographical Information Systems (GNAHRGIS) survey forms were completed, and the historic resources were photographed. Every structural resource within the designated quadrants was surveyed by qualified preservation staff within the project time frame, with the resulting data uploaded to the GNAHRGIS database. In all, Phase II assessed 796 resources within the two subject areas: 412 in the NW quadrant and 384 in the NE. Surveys like the one performed here are done to provide not only additional insight and information about the history of a community and the specific resources within but also to identify social patterns from developmental practices and identify community characteristics that can shape how to address future development in a manner compatible with existing traits. This Phase II effort revealed information about early residential construction that occurred in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century on the edges of the National Register listed Main Street District and north of the railroad tracks (NW Quad), as well as insight into the residential development that occurred north of this area and was generally sparser in the Northwest Quadrant and the Northeast Quadrant until the 1960s and 1970s. By better understanding these existing conditions and the factors that forged the Toccoa and Stephens County we see today, each community can improve how they sustain existing resources and neighborhoods even while pursuing never growth and development. This is particularly critical to the City of Toccoa, which along with main Street Toccoa and the Historic Preservation Commission (HPC), has been very active in the preservation of historic structures and has further designs on enhancing their traditional urban and residential forms. The historic resources survey also recorded the most common architectural styles and types, and the architectural integrity and the condition of the surveyed resources." Project funding was provided in part by a Historic Preservation Fund grant to the Historic Preservation Division, Georgia Department of Natural Resources, administered by the State, Tribal, Local Plans and Grants division, National Park Service, Department of the Interior (grant number P17AF00068).

Historic Resources Survey Phase II: City of Toccoa, Georgia NW & NE Quadrants, 2017-2018

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