The sun isn’t even out when Jennifer Lewis and a group of University of Georgia graduate students leave Athens to travel to Monticello, Georgia, in July 2025.
The first true heatwave of the summer has hit, and they know if they don’t finish surveying structures around the small town’s historic district, they’ll be miserable by lunchtime.
Monticello’s city leaders had contacted the Northeast Georgia Regional Commission (NEGRC) for an updated historic resources survey, and the agency turned to Lewis for help.
“They asked if I had a couple of graduate students to help do a historic resources survey,” said Lewis, director of the Center for Community Design and Preservation (CCDP), the public service unit of UGA’s College of Environment and Design. “I said, ‘How about eight?’”
Lewis is also the director of FindIt, a statewide program created to help document historic resources throughout Georgia and facilitate their preservation. Launched in 2002, FindIt gives students the opportunity to escape the classroom and explore historic resources across the state.
“Working with the FindIt team made this large-scale survey both manageable and efficient, and I was so grateful for their willingness to hit the ground running,” said Jody Graichen, NEGRC’s historic preservation planner. “Not only did students get hands-on experience in one of the region’s larger historic districts, but their work will help maintain Monticello’s certified local government status and assist with the Historic Preservation Commission’s design review.
“This partnership was a huge help to me, and a win for Monticello.”
Over the next two weeks, students pair off and walk around a specific section of Monticello, taking photographs and making notes of certain architectural styles, types of houses, or possible alterations they could find. This is the first time in several years that FindIt is focusing on a small town, rather than large-scale countywide surveys of areas like Athens-Clarke County and Macon.
“It’s one thing to study historic buildings in photos, but completely different to stand on the sidewalk in front of one—to see its details, its setting, and the neighborhood around it,” Lewis said. “You understand history so much better when you can walk through it.”
Serving the state and students for over 20 years
FindIt operates as a collaborative organization, working with the Carl Vinson Institute of Government’s Information Technology Outreach Services (ITOS) and several government entities across Georgia.
ITOS provides geographic information system (GIS) expertise and helps manage the statewide database of recorded resources. The staff trains students in GIS mapping, field data entry, and digital survey workflows, ensuring their data integrates seamlessly into state systems.
The Georgia State Historic Preservation Division collects the data and uses it to evaluate and review federally funded projects for compliance under the National Historic Preservation Act. Their partnership ensures that FindIt’s work meets professional preservation standards and can be used in official environmental and historic reviews.
FindIt is funded by the Georgia Transmission Corporation (GTC), a nonprofit utility company that acts as the intermediary between the state’s power generators and local electric membership corporations. Because GTC’s infrastructure projects receive federal funding, they must undergo environmental and historic review. The partnership between GTC and FindIt funds graduate assistantships for students and project support, while FindIt’s data helps expedite federal reviews.
“It’s a win-win-win for all the partners involved,” Lewis said. “The state gets more data, the [GTC] gets expedited project review, and our students get professional development training to become cultural resource managers.”
From classroom to community
FindIt’s projects are often focused on rural towns. Monticello, seat of Jasper County in central Georgia, has a population under 3,000.
Each year, the summer internship starts with two weeks of intense training led by Lewis, with students taking a deep dive into foundational texts like “The Ranch House Guide in Georgia” and “Tilling the Earth” and honing their architectural identification skills with quizzes over historic types and styles.
Building types often follow patterns tied to specific time periods and regional traditions. By identifying a building’s type, students can estimate its age and purpose even without documentation. For example, a one-story, two-room “saddlebag” house (two rooms flanking a central chimney) often points to 19th century vernacular housing—a home designed around local needs and using locally sourced materials—while a long, single-story ranch home signals post-World War II suburban development.
Downtown Monticello, Georgia. (Photo by Jennifer Lewis)
“Style,” by contrast, refers to a building’s decorative and aesthetic elements— details that express architectural trends of the era—such as windows and their arrangement, porch supports, columns, cornices, or moldings, doorways and facades, and materials and ornamentation.
Style helps students connect a building to broader design movements—for example, Gothic Revival, Queen Anne, Craftsman, Colonial Revival, or Mid-Century Modern. It also shows how national trends adapted locally; rural builders might simplify high-style patterns, resulting in vernacular versions unique to their region.
During FindIt’s training period, each student was sent on a “scavenger hunt” to create a presentation with real-world examples of the types and styles they had been learning. Some chose to highlight historic resources in their hometowns.
Hayden Dutton lived in Monticello for several years growing up. Her mother still teaches in the small town, and her grandfather lives there as well.
“It was really cool to go back to an area that I knew so well—or thought I knew really well—and be able to learn more about its history and its built environment,” Dutton said.
After the training period ended, students took part in a shadow week, conducting surveys with professional historians, visiting state agencies like the Georgia Department of Transportation, and learning how historic resource surveying plays into their projects.
When they arrived in Monticello, the team split the project into two phases: first they would resurvey existing “historic” resources, then survey resources not previously categorized as historic. NEGRC provided students with sophisticated GIS data that broke the city into sections, and FindIt divided and conquered.
The students found examples of historic house types such as Saddlebags, Central Hallway Cottages, and Queen Anne Cottages. They also toured Thomas Persons Hall, a former high school that has undergone a renovation sponsored by the local government and preservation groups.
Persons Hall now operates as an event space and museum. It sits near Monticello’s downtown square and has key characteristics of early 20th century institutional architecture: formal central entrance, classical proportions, and an inside auditorium. The first two floors have been renovated and are used as offices and classrooms, but the third floor still needs repair.
“It was interesting to compare the restoration work that had been done on the first two floors with the existing condition of the third,” Lewis said. “It was a great preservation showcase to see.”
Persons Hall is an example of historic preservation at its best. Part of the building was even used as the sheriff’s office in the 1992 film “My Cousin Vinny.”
Sadly, not all historic buildings have this kind of success story. Lewis recalled the students finding an old, rundown Methodist church just off the square. Architecturally, it’s a corner-tower church with a large front gable, a massive stained-glass window, and subtle Gothic details. Although its overall structure is simple, the stained-glass and tower give it a striking character.
“It’s such a handsome building,” Lewis said, “but it’s falling into disrepair because it was abandoned. The prominent stained-glass window is broken, and there are holes in the roof. The longer it sits like that, the faster it’s going to deteriorate.”
“Most folks have an interest in history in some capacity. It might be cars, family genealogy, or military history — but we all have an attachment to the past and an interest in what came before us and how it tells us about the lives we have today.”
– Jennifer Lewis, director of the Center for Community Design and Preservation
Preserving the past for the future
With support from the town’s residents and leaders, as well as NEGRC, FindIt students completed Monticello’s field survey in just four days, documenting some 460 properties.
“Monticello is a community that has valued preservation for several decades,” Lewis said. “They’ve had a National Register district and a local historic district for a long time, and an active preservation commission. They see the value of preservation in how their courthouse square has been revitalized.”
Historic preservation is integral to small communities, Lewis said. Local history is key to a town’s identity and a community’s knowledge of where it came from, how it developed, and what pieces of that story still exist in the built environment. Every building, street, and landscape holds traces of local history, culture, and craftsmanship.
In addition to the local cultural benefits, preservation plays a major economic role for towns like Monticello. Revitalizing historic buildings can stimulate local economies, attract tourism, and draw new residents. It’s also a more environmentally friendly and sustainable route than tearing down and building anew.
Through projects like FindIt, residents often share their own memories or family stories when students come to document their homes. These interactions spark local pride and help people see their neighborhoods in a new light—not just as old buildings, but as living artifacts of community history.
