Shopping LOCAL in Newnan: the square, its side streets and Market Day

When Newnan wants a gift with a story behind it, the search usually starts at the courthouse. The square around the Coweta County Courthouse has been the town's center since at least 1868, and most of the brick storefronts that face it went up between 1895 and 1900, according to Georgia's state tourism office. Those buildings have stayed largely intact while the suburbs grew around them, and today they hold bookshops, boutiques, galleries and makers.

This guide walks the square and the streets that run off it, heads up Jackson Street to a gallery that outgrew its downtown home, and ends with the dates that bring the most people downtown this season.

Around Court Square

The square is the easy place to start. Parking downtown is free, and the shops sit close enough together to walk in a loop.

Newnan Mercantile, on Greenville Street just off the square, fills its rooms with home décor, kitchen and dining pieces, furniture, women's clothing, gifts for men and baby goods from its own Ellie + Roo line. The store runs a program it calls Newnan Mercantile on Mission: part of the proceeds from its quarterly warehouse sale goes to local needs, and the shop says recent rounds bought school supplies and backpacks for children and helped a family that had been out of work.

Around the corner on Jackson Street, Ella Anne Needlepoint is a shop built for stitchers. It carries hand-painted canvases for beginners and seasoned stitchers alike, along with silk, wool and cotton threads, stretcher bars and project bags, and it holds workshops and trunk shows. The owner, Shae, named the shop for her great-grandmother Ella and her grandmother Helen Ann.

Two bookshops, a short walk apart

Newnan has two independent bookstores within a few minutes' walk of each other, and each has its own personality.

Newnan Book Co., on Jackson Street, describes itself as an everything bookstore for everyone. It opened in 2022 as Candle Wick Book Company; in 2025 founder Laura Meredith handed it to Elizabeth Webber and her family, who renovated the shop and reopened it that June, as the trade newsletter Shelf Awareness reported. Today it runs book clubs, a children's section called Book Co. Kids and a Friday-morning preschool storytime.

Just behind the square on Perry Street, Morally Gray opened on October 18, 2025, as a romance-focused bookstore. Owner Allie Turner is a therapist turned bookseller, and the shop stocks love stories in every subgenre, buys used books, and hosts author signings, adult book clubs, coloring nights, mahjong and a holiday gift exchange.

Art, framing and a gallery up Jackson Street

Just east of the square, FineLines Art & Framing, now inside the Boyd Gallery on East Washington Street, does custom framing, a useful stop if you pick up a print at Market Day and want it on the wall before the holidays.

Follow Jackson Street north toward the bypass and you reach Corner Arts Gallery, Studio & Gift Shop. After fourteen years downtown, owner Jenny Jones moved the gallery into the former Coweta-Fayette EMC building for more classroom space and easier parking. The gift shop sells paintings, photography, pottery, jewelry, fabric and string art, woodwork and carvings by local artists, and the studio teaches drawing, painting, ceramics, mosaics, sewing, knitting and quilting to students from age three to 103, as the gallery puts it, along with paint-your-own pottery nights.

Market Day and the holiday shopping nights

On the first Saturday of each month from March through December, Main Street Newnan sets up The Market Day around the courthouse square. It is free to attend and brings more than 50 booths of local makers, artists and farmers: produce, honey, jams and salsa sit beside pottery, leather goods, baskets, children's clothing, birdhouses, wood and fiber art, wreaths and floral design. The last market of 2026 falls on December 5, and the season picks up again in March.

The weeks around Thanksgiving are when downtown leans hardest into shopping local. The City of Newnan's calendar lists Plaid Friday on November 27, the day after Thanksgiving, which the city describes as downtown's answer to big-box Black Friday sales; that evening Santa arrives on a fire truck to light the tree on the square. Small Business Saturday follows on November 28.

Why it matters here

Newnan's square works as a main street because people keep choosing it. Main Street Newnan and the city's Downtown Development Authority back that choice with matching grants: façade grants for storefronts, and a Brick & Click grant that helps downtown shops build their online presence. Several of the shops in this guide are run by the owners who stock them, and one of them puts part of its sales straight back into local causes. A novel bought on Perry Street or a canvas chosen on Jackson Street keeps that going.

Check each shop's own page for hours before you go, especially around the holidays, when many keep longer ones.