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Columbus may perhaps appreciate the charm of its old homes, but there is
evidence to show that it did not appreciate certain other weatherworn
structures of great beauty. I have seen photographs of an old Baptist
Church with a fine (and not at all Baptist-looking) portico and fluted
columns, which was torn down to make room for the present stupidly
commonplace Baptist church: and I have seen pictures of the beautiful
old town hall which was recently supplanted by an ignorantly ordinary
town building of yellow pressed brick. The destruction of these two
early buildings represents an irreparable loss to Columbus, and it is to
be hoped that the town will some day be sufficiently enlightened to
know that this is true and to regret that it did not restore and enlarge
them instead of tearing them down.
Until a decade or two ago Columbus had, so far as I can learn, but four
streets possessing names: Main Street, Market Street, College Street,
and Catfish Alley, all other streets being known as "the street that
Mrs. Billups, or Mrs. Sykes, or Mrs. Humphries, or Mrs. Some-one-else
lives on."
Market and Main are business streets--at least they are so where they
cross--and, like the other streets, are wide. They are lined with brick
buildings few if any of them more than three stories in height, and it
was in one of these buildings, on Main Street, that we found the Bell
Cafe--advertised as "the most exclusive cafe in the State.
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