Columbus was laid out on the east bank of the Tombigbee River in 1821 after Plymouth, the area’s first settlement established in 1817 on the lower west bank, flooded. General Andrew Jackson’s Military Road arrived in 1820, steamboats came up the Tombigbee River soon after, and immigration began in earnest after Columbus became the seat of newly formed Lowndes County in 1830. A spur rail line was built in the 1850s and through tracks laid in the late 1860s. The town had limited strategic importance during the Civil War and suffered no damage.
As they did in Natchez, most planters chose to make their homes in town and manage their plantations from a distance, which made Columbus a year-round social as well as economic center for the local aristocracy. In the booming 1840s and 1850s, master-carpenter and designer James Lull (1814–1871) lived here and made it the locus of a distinctive hybrid residential style, combining Greek, Gothic, Italianate, and Tudor features. A Vermont native, Lull is said to have trained in Philadelphia and may have come to Columbus to build the First Baptist Church (1835–1839).
Partly due to Lull’s influence, Columbus is second in the state only to Natchez in its abundance of sophisticated antebellum buildings, and it has a wealth of significant structures from later periods. Many of the public and institutional buildings of the 1890s and early twentieth century benefited from the involvement of Chattanooga-based R. H. Hunt. Inspired by Natchez’s annual tours, a spring pilgrimage of homes began in 1940. Today, the town’s economy is based around tourism, educational and medical institutions, and the nearby Columbus Air Force Base.
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