Spinks-Mayes Building

Duane's take

Here's how the marker tells it, and I'm gonna give it my own spin. Down in Houston County, there's a building that's been standin since eighteen ninety-one, and it has got a story worth pullin over for. Rudd Crawford Spinks put it up, built it out across eighteen ninety-one and ninety-two, and when it was done, he moved right in.

Literally. His jewelry and music store occupied the ground floor, and he kept his living quarters upstairs. Now that's a man who kept a short commute.

The building itself is Victorian in design, dressed up with pressed tin detailing, the kind of craftsmanship that makes you stop and look twice even a hundred and some years on. Before Spinks ever broke ground, though, the site had a history of its own. A man named S.A.

Miller had owned it, a prominent local attorney who went on to serve as a state legislator and Houston County judge. The ground Spinks built on had already seen some serious ambition pass through it. Then came W.E.

Mayes. Goes by Buck. Buck was a landowner, and in eighteen ninety-five he bought the building from Spinks.

And here's where it gets quietly remarkable. That building stayed in the Mayes family for forty-five years. Forty-five years of one family holding onto a piece of Houston County, watching the world change outside those pressed tin walls.

A jewelry shop, a music store, living quarters above it all, a judge's old lot, a landowner's long grip. The Spinks-Mayes Building didn't just survive. It accumulated.

What the marker says

Built in 1891-92 by Rudd Crawford Spinks, This structure originally housed his jewelry and music store and included upstairs living quarters. The site had been owned earlier by S.A. Miller, a prominent local attorney who later served as a state legislator and Houston County judge. W.E. "Buck" Mayes, a landowner, bought the building in 1895 and it remained in his family for 45 years. Victorian in design, it features pressed tin detailing.