Editing Americus, Georgia (section)

===Early years===
For its first two decades, Americus was a small courthouse town. The Starksville Road, now Lee Street, was an important highway before the city was founded, and is now the location of many of the older buildings and homes listed in the [[Americus Historic District]].<ref name="nrhpdoc2" /> The arrival of the railroad in 1854 and, three decades later, local attorney Samuel H. Hawkins' construction of the only privately financed railroad in state history made Americus the eighth largest city in Georgia into the 20th century. It was known as the "Metropolis of Southwest Georgia", a reflection of its status as a cotton distribution center.

In 1890, Georgia's first chartered [[electric street car]] system went into operation in Americus. One of its restored cars is on permanent display at the Lake Blackshear Regional Library, a gift from the Robert T. Crabb family who acquired the street car in the 1940s.

The town was already graced with an abundance of [[Antebellum architecture|antebellum]] and [[Victorian architecture]] when local capitalists opened the [[Windsor Hotel (Americus)|Windsor Hotel]] in 1892. A five-story Queen Anne edifice, it was designed by a Swedish architect, [[Gottfried L. Norrman]], in [[Atlanta, Georgia|Atlanta]]. Vice-president Thomas R. Marshall gave a speech from the balcony in 1917, and soon to be New York Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke in the dining room in 1928.

On January 1, 1976, the city center was listed on the [[National Register of Historic Places]] as the Americus Historic District. The district boundaries were extended in 1979.<ref name="nris">{{NRISref|2009a}}</ref>