Columns

The six columns of the old Bryan house, born of handmade bricks and cloaked in white lime stucco, stand like sentinels, their forms plain and unadorned in their first days, without the flourish of tiered bases or capitals. Each rests on a humble foundation of un-mortared brick, sunk a foot below the earth’s skin, from which a square base rises three feet, then yields to a round body that tapers upward for eight more, stretching to a quiet height of eleven feet, as if reaching for the sky’s own secrets.

Time, with its restless hands, has worked changes upon them. Beyond fresh coats of stucco, they were reshaped to echo the Greek Revival’s proud lines, so favored in days gone by. Tiered bases of lime cement were added at their feet, and stuccoed wooden rings crowned their tops, mimicking the grandeur of Corinthian capitals. Patchworks followed—chicken wire, fiberglass matting, and Styrofoam, of all things, pressed into service to mend what time and weather had worn away, like makeshift stitches on a tattered quilt.

The columns, fragile now, their old bricks too brittle to reclaim, cannot return to their first, unadorned truth. Yet the heart of their beginnings can be called back. The later additions will be gently undone, the crumbling bricks traded for new, and a fresh veil of stucco will wrap them once more in their original guise. In 2026, the work will be done, and the columns will stand again, whispering of Houston County evenings when the dusk settles soft and the house holds its breath, remembering.