The Grotto was once a stretch of land young men studying at St. Stanislaus College would visit for recreation and reflection as they journeyed into priesthood. Over a 100 years later, after the college burned, The Grotto remains.

Although hidden away and forgotten by many, Stephen Reichert, one of the property owners of The Grotto recalls the long and rich history of how The Grotto came into existence.

Reichert said the origin of The Grotto began in the early part of the 19th century during the conclusion of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. Over the next three years, the construction of Fort Hawkins, which was responsible for trading and communicating with the Creeks, began to experience tension growing among the Creek Indians and the colonists, he said.

As the tension evolved, the Creeks and the colonists started a war known as The Battle of Horseshoe Bend, Reichert said. The war concluded with the defeat of the Creek Indians and the forced surrender of nearly 22 million acres of land to the United States government, he said.

When the land was ceded, the Creek Indians were forced to migrate to Oklahoma, Reichert said. Once the Indians were moved, the United States began distributing land to settlers willing to come inhabit the land, he said.

The Grotto was a part of the land that was redistributed. Before the land became known as The Grotto, is was a part of an 1821 land grant to a woman named Ann Richey, he said.

“We don’t know what Ann Richey actually did with the property, but she got 202 acres,” he said.

While the land grants continued throughout the years, around the 1830s, a large number of Irish Catholics came to Central Georgia to work on and build the railroads, Reichert said.

The huge influx of Irish Catholics in the Southeast resulted in the creation of a diocese in Charleston, South Carolina, which later became an archdiocese, and also the creation of a diocese in Savannah, in the 1850s, Reichert said.

“The Archdiocese in Charleston and the diocese in Savannah decided to build a college to train young men for the priesthood, and they decided to establish it in Macon,”  he said.

In 1874, both establishments laid the foundations for what was then known as Pio Nono College.

“The college struggled for about a dozen years,” Reichert said. In 1862, the college reached out to the Archdiocese in New Orleans for help, and the Archdiocese responded by sending Jesuits to the college, he said. When the Jesuits arrived at Pio Nono College they renamed the college to St. Stanislaus College after a patron saint, he said.

In 1876, the Jesuits overhauled the college, Reichert said. They added balconies to the buildings, and worked on making the area more attractive to attract young men to join the priesthood, he said.

“Then the college began to flourish, and in 1901 they bought 100 acres of this original 202-acre land grant to use as recreation for the young men at the college,” Reichert said of the area that is now The Grotto.

The Jesuits were able to get to the land via the trolley that used to run down Vineville Avenue, he said.

“They built trails on which they established Stations of the Cross, they built a villa over on the far side, over there, they built a swimming pool, and they built a replica of the Grotto in Lourdes France, which was a Jesuit holy site,” Reichert said.

The history behind The Grotto began when a young French girl named Bernadette saw an apparition of what she thought was the Blessed Mother while she was collecting sticks for firewood, Reichert said. The second time she saw the apparition, it told her to dig in the earth, he said. As she dug into the earth she uncovered a natural spring that would supposedly heal people of their ailments as they drank water.

The most notorious of all the sites is the replica of The Grotto. The origin of The Grotto began in Lourdes, France as a pilgrimage by many Catholics, Reichert said.

“Then it became a pilgrimage site, and hundreds of thousands of people a year still go to the Grotto in Lord France,” he said.

When the Jesuits made the replica, there was a statue of the Blessed Mother along with another statue of a little girl kneeling in prayer — Bernadette, Reichert said.

The Jesuits kept The Grotto for four years after the college burned down. They ended up selling The Grotto to North Winship in 1924, and the land the college was on was sold to a real estate developer in 1926.

He said when Jesuits sold the land, they took all the statuary to either New Orleans and Alabama, aside from one that broke and remains on the ground of The Grotto.

He said he was able to find a replica of the Blessed Mother, but has never been able to find one of Bernadette. However, since he added in the statue of the Blessed Mother back, the vandalism and graffiti had reduced a little bit and the quality of the area improved, he said.

Reichert said the Jesuits spent four years trying to raise enough money to rebuild the school, but to no avail.

“In 1925, they sold the land on which the college had been to Murphy, Taylor, and Ellis, who developed Stanislaus Circle,” Reichert said.. Shortly thereafter, in 1929, American diplomat and ambassador, North Winship retired back to his hometown of Macon and bought 100 acres of the land from his brother Emory Winship and Lon Wimbish, Reichert further said.

Gallery • 4 Photos

Piper Riser

A monument that sits inside The Grotto that was built by North Winship recalls the ownership of the land. Translation: I am born for greater things.

“He got 100 acres of that, and then he decided he wanted to reassemble it as much as he could,” Reichert said.  In 1931, Winship bought the other 100 acres of land of The Grotto from the Catholics after they had decided they were not going to rebuild the college, he said.

“Winship reassembled the original 202-acre land grant, and he built his house, interestingly enough, on the foundations of the villa that the Catholics had built,” Reichert said.

He said Winship died in 1968, and the house sat empty until 1974 when vandals burned it to the ground. As a result, in 1975, the 202 acres of land Winship reassembled, was sold to developers and divided into three parts, he said.

The first part has apartments built on it that are located on Forest Hill Road, Reichert said. The second part was sold to developer Bill Ramsbottom, and the final part belonged to a friend of Ramsbottom, said Reichert.

He further said he came into possession of the land through efforts started by his younger brother, Robert Reichert. Back in the late 1980s, was looking for some land to build a home and place his family, and he settled on a location by Rosa Taylor School, Reichert said.

However, his young brother, much like Winship, was interested in the history of The Grotto and wanted to see how much of the original land grant he could reassemble, and purchased the middle section from Ramsbottom, Reichert said.

After the family that lived on the property of the third part of the divided land moved away, Reichert saw the opportunity and invested in the land, and ultimately purchased another piece.

“All that’s left of the 202 acres of the original land grant is about 75 acres,” he said. The land that Reichert owns is divided among him, his brother, and his nephew.

Reichert also said, one of the unique aspects of The Grotto is the age of the forest and the atmosphere it gives off.

“There’s still a lot of virgin timber on the property, because it’s never been farmed,” he said. “You can hardly believe, you know, it feels like North Carolina.”

Mercer University Professor of Biology Heather Bowman Cutway says that The Grotto is a very unique place.

“You get really the feeling of really being someplace outside Macon, maybe somewhere in the north Georgia mountains,” she said. “It has these very old trees that were kind of protected from both agriculture and development, because there’s really steep ravines,” said Bowman Cutway.

Bowman Cutway has been working with Reichert to further her research into saving a federally endangered plant that grows inside The Grotto, she said.

Part of her work to save the endangered species her research focuses on, also involves her dealing with non-native plants in the area such as privet and English Ivy, she said. It offered her a great opportunity to help remove the overgrowth, while allowing for her endangered plant to thrive it’s native territory, she further said.

“I think with the health of the landscape, we’re very excited about what we’ll be able to grow once these things like privet and English ivy aren’t there competing with the native plants,” Bowman Cutway said. “In addition to that, I think it will also enhance the experience of being at the Grotto and seeing these historic structures, because both English ivy and privet are evergreen plants that grow very densely.”

Reichert emphasizes that The Grotto is on private property, but he is working on making it more accessible for the public to view it through tours provided by The Museum of Arts and Sciences.

“The landowners do want to work to bring the public in, because they know what a treasure it is,” Bowman Cutway said. “That’s part of why they bought the property, was to preserve this treasure that’s in Macon, both in terms of the natural habitat and these historic structures.”

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