McNeal Funeral Home Inc

It’s a two story greyish-blue home with white trim, a front porch, and a fireplace. Oak trees shade the yard and stairs lead to the property from a charming brick sidewalk. The home sits back on its lot behind a wrought iron fence on Peeples Street, although that specific fence wasn’t there when the house was built in 1856. The West End is older than the city of Atlanta itself, so it’s no surprise that this house is older than most of the structures in the city. Before there was Marthasville, Terminus or Atlanta, there was the West End. With people settling in the area in the 1820s.It might as well have been the western frontier. Horse drawn buggies rode down dirt and cobblestone streets. As local historian Robert Thompson explains, across the river was a different country with a different constitution: the Cherokee nation. Charner Humphries was one of the wealthy white men who settled in the West End. He bought land in 1835, two years before the site for Atlanta was located, according to a 1957 article in the West End Star. Humphries purchased 14 acres at the corner of a popular trade route, at what is now the corner of Ralph David Abernathy and Lee streets. An account from 1902 describes the home he built as a “number of shanties, huddled together painted white, the only painted house in the country.” Older paintings and drawings show a two story home with six columns, a gable roof, and a two level front porch painted white. Thompson laughs at this image of a grand house and explains that it was probably much simpler all that time ago.Robert Thompson poses for a portrait inside the Hammonds House where he is a docent. Formerly the home of Dr. Otis Thrash Hammonds, Atlanta physician and art collector, the Hammonds House was built in 1870 and is now a museum of African-American art. Thompson also offers historical tours of the West End through his company, Insight Cultural Tourism. (Photo by Evey Wilson)The common thread among all stories is that Humphries’ home was calle...