The Joseph Henry Lumpkin House was built in the 1830s, and purchased by its namesake, the first chief justice of the Georgia Supreme Court, in 1842.

Lumpkin purchased the home around 1842, and in 1850 undertook extensive renovations, when the house was nearly doubled in size.

[2] After Lumpkin, the house was the site of Madame Sosnowski’s Female Institute, offering young women instruction in German, French, and music.

[2] Beginning in the early 1900s and for several decades thereafter, the house served as the home of the Athens Women's Club.

The University of Georgia School of Law had the building renovated for its Institute of Continuing Legal Education;[4] it reopened in 1984.