University builds a literary bridge between the Chattahoochee and Hudson rivers

Columbus State University has completed a major preservation and rehabilitation of Carson McCullers’ former home in Nyack, New York—an 1880s Victorian overlooking the Hudson River—earning a Rehabilitation Award from the Historical Society of Rockland County for its restored façade and front walkway.

Together with McCullers’ childhood home in Columbus, Georgia, the Nyack residence now forms a bistate “literary bridge” between the Hudson and the Chattahoochee, serving as the centerpiece of Columbus State’s Carson McCullers Center for Writers & Musicians and positioning the university as a leading hub for research and archives on McCullers.

The Nyack house is being transformed into a study-away and creative residency space, hosting Columbus State students for spring break and summer programs, supporting internships in nearby Manhattan, and welcoming writers, musicians, filmmakers and scholars for short-term fellowships in the home where McCullers wrote and entertained cultural figures like Tennessee Williams, Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller.

Today, thanks to Columbus State University’s dedicated efforts, this historic residence is preserved as a monument to one of America’s most prominent Southern Gothic voices.

McCullers, born Lula Carson Smith, was a Columbus native whose work—including The Heart is a Lonely Hunter and The Member of the Wedding—captured the complexities of the human condition with a haunting, lyrical precision. Since 2003, Columbus State has operated the Carson McCullers Center for Writers & Musicians in the author’s childhood home on Stark Avenue, near its RiverPark Campus, where McCullers lived from the age of 10 until she graduated from Columbus High School. When the university secured McCullers’ adult home in New York in 2013, it created a geographical bridge between her Southern roots and the Northern landscape where she solidified her literary fame.

The university inherited the three-story, 6,000-square-foot house from Dr. Mary Mercer’s estate. Mercer, who was not only McCullers’ physician but also a lifelong friend, had bought the house shortly after the author’s death in 1967. The estate gift also included a $350,000 donation and a collection of personal artifacts, establishing Columbus State as a leading center for McCullers research.

“Preserving the home is about more than bricks and mortar. It is about curating a reputation,” explained Dr. Nick Norwood, director of the McCullers Center and a professor in the Department of English. “By restoring the physical space where Carson lived and interacted with her contemporaries, Columbus State is preserving the ‘sanctum’ of her career.”

Donated artifacts that accompanied the house—ranging from her art collection and 10,000 pages of personal documents to the very sofa where she wrote her final novel, Clock Without Hands—have been managed and preserved by Columbus State’s Archives & Special Collections. This collection has placed the university ahead of prestigious institutions like Duke University in terms of McCullers’ research materials.

Through the “Friends of the Carson McCullers Center” and various endowments, Columbus State is ensuring that the maintenance and preservation of both McCullers’ Columbus and Nyack homes, and the author’s memorabilia, are self-sustaining. These funds support not just the physical grounds but the scholarships and fellowships that bring the houses to life.