As Purchase Deadline Passes, Aunt Fanny's Cabin Demolition Is Not Quite Finalized: Report

SMYRNA, GA — Smyrna City Council members gave the public from Dec. 20 until Feb. 1 for someone to step forward, buy Aunt Fanny's Cabin and move it from city-owned land after council voted to demolish it otherwise.

The 19th century cabin once housed a famous restaurant with a tangled racial background and was named after Fanny Williams, an early civil rights advocate.

No bids were submitted to the city by the Tuesday deadline — but council hasn't quite solidified what to do — or when — with the dilapidated structure, according to the Marietta Daily Journal.

Despite the deadline, council members will discuss two documents the city received in regard to Aunt Fanny's Cabin and its future at Thursday's Committee of the Whole meeting, neither of which were official purchase proposals, the MDJ reported.

One document asks the city to extend the deadline for accepting proposals to buy the cabin, while the other — from the same group that protested outside the cabin Monday over the possible demolition — asked the council to reconsider its December decision to demolish the cabin unless it sold.

However, Smyrna resident Montserrat Knowlton sent photos to Patch showing bulldozers and construction crews in front of Aunt Fanny's Cabin on Wednesday afternoon.

Related:

• Calls To Save Aunt Fanny's Cabin Come As Deadline Looms
• Aunt Fanny's Cabin To Be Demolished Unless Sold: City Council

The cabin — with yellow caution tape surrounding it — sits next to the Smyrna History Museum and once served as a sharecroppers' house, but turned into a famous restaurant that drew in celebrities from across the country, garnering a reputation for delicious Southern cuisine.

But it also had a reputation of glorifying the "Old South" and using racist depictions of Black people to entertain dinner guests.

The restaurant closed in 1992, and in 1997 the city of Smyrna bought the cabin. However, it did not maintain upkeep of the cabin, which led to its crumbling state. The city closed the building to the public in 2020 because it was deemed a danger to the public.

"The city is spending millions in the downtown area. They could have found a way to fix the Cabin. After all the poor present condition if the building is the city’s failure. They should have budgeted money all along to upkeep the cabin — it was their responsibility," Knowlton told Patch. "More time is needed to come up with a workable solution. It’s not a good event on Black History Month to tear a historic building dear to the Black community in Smyrna."

The cabin was named after Williams, a longtime servant of some of Smyrna's first settlers: the Campbell family, for whom Campbell Road and Campbell Elementary School are named, according to Mike Terry, a former chair of the Cobb Planning Commission and unofficial city historian.

Williams was a beloved figure in metro Atlanta, and was even considered an early civil rights advocate who spoke out against Cobb County's Ku Klux Klan and helped raise money for the state's first all-Black hospital in Marietta; however, she was reduced to a mascot of sorts for the cabin, which had an Old South aesthetic that many other restaurants adopted.

Council voted 4-2 to demolish the cabin, in part due to the controversial history and in part due to the cost of renovation or preservation — an estimated cost of $400,000 to $600,000, city officials previously said.

"We do not want to continue to erase the history of our people," said Jeriene Bonner Grimes, president of the Cobb County chapter of the NAACP, at a press conference Monday, the MDJ reported. "[Fanny Williams] was very significant, she was a freedom fighter, she was an advocate."

Others say keeping it would honor the racist legacy, not Williams herself — and council members and Mayor Derek Norton have already confirmed that they will build a proper memorial for Williams, regardless of the fate of the cabin.

"One very important piece is that there was universal agreement that a memorial — a proper memorial — be instituted for Ms. Fanny Williams and her contributions to the community. Not only Smyrna, but the county and, indeed, the region," Councilman Travis Lindley said before the vote in December. "I have to say, for my part, that is probably the most important takeaway. Regardless of what happens to the cabin, we've got to get that right."