Why Is There a Space Needle in Macon, Georgia?
Image: Dustin Chambers
Jesse Evans, a semiretired 73-year-old contractor, can see the Space Needle from his front porch in Macon, Georgia.
Though he grew up in Macon, Evans’s heart lies in Seattle. He built a 16-foot replica of the Space Needle in his yard as an ode to his late wife, but also as an ode to the city he still loves.
In 1970, a summer railroad job brought him through Seattle. Enchanted, on his next trip through he stopped in at the University of Washington and applied to transfer from Atlanta’s Morehouse College.
Image: Dustin Chambers
When he found out he’d gotten into UW, “I was on cloud nine,” Evans says.
He attended UW and developed a lifelong love for the Huskies football team. Then, in the early 1980s, he found romantic love at an Eastlake club.
“Her name was Theresa Laverne Lee,” Evans says. “She was a model for Anheuser-
Busch—I didn’t know that at the time, but I suspected something.” Theresa walked up to Evans’s table, “and I said, ‘Wow,’” Evans says, drawing out the word. “I asked if I could buy her a drink.”
The two married and lived together in Seattle for a decade until an ailing family member brought them back to Macon, where they lived happily. Then, on New Year’s Day in 2000, Theresa died from a cerebral hemorrhage at age 44.
Ever the builder, Evans constructed a fence around Theresa’s gravesite and his future gravesite. But the fence couldn’t stay. “People at the graveyard told me I had to pick it up,” he says.
Image: Dustin Chambers
Sitting on his porch afterward, Evans stared at the mercury-vapor lamp of the streetlight. It reminded him of the Space Needle. “I said, ‘That’s what I’ll do, I’ll build a model of the Seattle Space Needle, and I dare anyone to tell me to move that,” Evans says.
Over three years, Evans drew up the plans, accumulated materials, and erected the 16-foot aluminum replica in his spare time. The real Space Needle even gave him official permission to build the structure. While discussing that, the manager asked Evans, “Well, what color are you going to paint it?”
Image: Dustin Chambers
He connected Evans with the paint company for the actual monument. In a matter of weeks, a FedEx truck carrying a quart each of Space Needle White, Gold, Halo, and Bronze paint arrived in Macon, free of charge.
The Space Needle has stood tall in front of Evans’s house ever since, and hasn’t moved except for the one time Evans transported it to Ann Arbor, Michigan, for a UW vs. Michigan football game.
“I’m an alumni,” Evans says proudly. “It’s my life.”
