Judge William Varner House

William Varner, Planter and Architect

William Verner was born May 9, 1793, in Decatur County, Georgia, the son of Irish and Scottish immigrants George Varner and Elizabeth Donaldson. After his wife, Sabrina Watson, and his mother died in 1853 and 1855, William moved to Macon County, Alabama, where he became a successful planter.

Grey Columns is a former plantation house located on the former site of Vernor’s plantation. It was built for and designed by William Varner principally in Greek Revival style but with elements of the Italianate. The property included several outbuildings and slave quarters, suggesting the house may have been built using slave labor. According to oral history, during the Civil War, a Union general was ordered to burn Tuskegee to the ground; one of the officers found out that his frat brother at Yale, Edward Terry Varner, was at the house, tending to wounds he had received. It was because of this connection that the house was spared.

Now the residence for the president of Tuskegee University, one of the nation’s oldest historically Black institutions of higher learning. As architecture historian Robert Gamble wrote, “Grey Columns is a striking architectural testament to the pre–Civil War affluence made possible in this part of Alabama by the work of enslaved African Americans. Visually, it also embodies a mythic image of the Old South that, for generations, mesmerized white Americans from both the North and South.“

The Varner family supported Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee Institute since its establishment in 1881. They initially rented cabins on Varner land next to Grey Columns along Montgomery Road to the school for boys’ housing. Washington also built “the Pavilion,” a basic structure for school assemblies and public events on another parcel leased from the family. Eventually, the Varners sold Washington the site for his impressive brick residence, The Oaks, which was finished in the late 1890s.

Judge William Varner

One of these cabins would later become the home of Judge William Vernor, grandson of plantation owner William Vernor. The younger Vernor was born on July 20, 1888, the son of Robert Roland Varner and Cora Evans. He was born in Bonifay, Florida, but had lived in Tuskegee since he was 11 years old. He received his education in the Macon County public schools and his law degree from the University of Alabama in 1911.

He served as an attorney and mayor for the City of Tuskegee, to which he was appointed to fill an unexpired term. In 1916, he was elected mayor and served three terms, two of which he ran unopposed. In 1919, he served an unexpired term in the Alabama Legislature and was elected full term after its expiration. He was elected as president of the Macon County Bar Association in 1934. In 1935, he was appointed by Governor Bibb Graves as probate judge of Macon County and served as such until his retirement in 1963. William Varner died on February 22, 1966.

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