Historic districts are combinations of buildings, structures, sites, objects, landscapes, and structured environments where the overall grouping, the ensemble, takes on an identity and significance apart from its individual components. The most common type of historic district in Georgia is the residential neighborhood. Another common type is the downtown central business district. The Waynesboro Historic District in Burke County – Georgia’s 2,000th listing in the National Register of Historic Places – comprises an entire historic community. Other equally important but less numerous types of historic districts include industrial and warehousing areas, school campuses, military installations, parks, and waterfronts. Farms with their houses, outbuildings, and field systems also comprise historic districts.
Georgia has several vast archaeological districts, such as the Etowah Valley, and several large rural historic districts containing multiple farms, rural communities, and historic rural landscapes, such as the Sautee-Nacoochee Valleys in White County and the Johnstonville-Goggins historic district in Lamar and Monroe Counties. The largest historic district in Georgia in terms of acreage is McLemore Cove in Walker County (50,141 acres); the largest historic districts in terms of numbers of contributing historic resources are Kirkwood (1,788) in DeKalb County and Collier Heights (1,757 contributing resources) in Fulton County. The smallest historic district in Georgia is a row of three shotgun houses along a street, all that remains of a once-extensive historic African American neighborhood.
