T.R.R. Cobb House
Built around 1834 as a modest "Plantation Plain" house and given in 1844 as a wedding gift to Confederate Constitution author Thomas Reade Rootes Cobb and his wife Marion Lumpkin, the home gained its distinctive octagonal wings and Doric portico by 1852. After Cobb died at Fredericksburg in 1862 it passed through use as a fraternity house, boarding house, and church rectory, was moved to Stone Mountain in 1985 to escape demolition, and finally returned to Athens for restoration as a museum in 2005. The oldest haunting account, recorded by the WPA Federal Writers' Project in the 1930s, tells of "a gentleman wearing a gay dressing gown" who descends the stairs and settles before the fire in the drawing room. Staff and visitors at the restored house have since reported footsteps and laughter in empty rooms, a disembodied voice shushing a man in Cobb's former bedroom, and a figure by the library fireplace. The dressing-gowned gentleman remains the house's most enduring resident.
📍 175 Hill Street, Athens, GA 30601, Athens, GA · Get directions