I bet this house looked 200 years old on the day they moved in.

I got a tip from Terry Stephens. He was preparing an estate sale and I recognized the picture. I told everybody I knew, sorry if you didn't get the word, very sorry.  Pictures don't cut it. The junky estate sale look didn't spoil it.

This way. There's another little video at the end.


The front.


Garden view.


This is the best you can see it without going on the property. My picture from 2011.

"Monie Alan Ferst graduated from Georgia Tech in 1911 with a degree in M.E. He founded Scripto, Inc., and retired as chairman of the board." - Georgia Tech Digital Archive

"The architect's medieval aesthetic is successfully translated to a French provincial farm environment at the Monie Ferst House (1929)..." -  Robert Criaig, New Georgia Encyclopedia

"Shutze created as successful a rendition of the Normandy farmhouse as any other contemporary architect and yet it may be his only design in the Style." - Elizabeth Meredith Dowling American Classicist the Architecture of Philip Teammell Shutze The floor plans are in the book.

"Truth be told, I was more interested in seeing the home & gardens than actually shopping the contents of the sale." Sarah Ferguson who blogged it DUCHESS FARE with some great pictures.

My camera wasn't up to the task.


These little rustic obelisks mark the drive but you can't really see the house.


I'm a gravel driveway man and this has with ultra-rustic "curbs."


Ladies in heels had to be careful here.


"Garage" just isn't the right word. Efficiency apartment for staff above with entrance via the stair. Bring your groceries in by the door in the ell.


How it looks from the somewhat dirty master bedroom window.


How it looks from the living room window. Probably the best view of a garage in Atlanta.


This sort of stuff is just out where it belongs. Detailing for miles and miles makes for big harmony.


Oh yeah, the tower is in the other ell, circular stair inside. The wing on the right has the formal living room below and master suite above.


Shutze's front doors seem small to me and I mean perfectly small. It say's come on in.


Curved windows cost extra.

Take a look back in the back:



Best to you.

I'm showing the backside of this Neel Reid because it felt great. More like this please.

All these houses are collaborations but in Atlanta they distill down to "It's a Neel Reid." And there is definitely a thing about them. I visit "Neel Reid's" when I can thanks to friends who tell me about estate sales and open houses.

This is the only chance I'll get, just an hour or so. Should I go back on the last day of the sale or stick with my first impressions? I returned.

Here's the street view.


Sold now. Overgrown. I bet Neel would do some trimming. We Atlantans do let our plantings go (except for butchering our Crepe Myrtles).

A little of the back, just a tease:


Where life happens.


With embracing shapes that hug the garden and hug the people.


The kitchen and back steps are in here.


This is the epitome of Neel Reid to me: Dotted "i" over a sturdy box in an open gable, the corner-boards read as columns under the returns. This is less but "less" is complicated.


Imagine 101 years of family at this door: All the groceries hauled in, all the dogs let out. Curvy corners in the lattice harmonize the curvy fan light.


Sleeping porch above. People attractor below. Chunky cornices with details galore. What do you call those asterisks? They animate everything.


When folks walked out here, they paused and sighed and many sat down. Me too and on both days. The doorway opens to the big formal living room.


Bill told me if it's in the architecture, you don't need to decorate..

(See Tara Dillard's: What Makes a Garden: Vanishing Threshold.)

I wish you could see it yourself.

One more tease before I go.


There's a house in the back of the back.

I drove Peachtree Road yesterday and as usual nobody looked happy, not even the folks driving 50.

"Right now Peachtree Road is a highway, our most famous street is a lifeless, un-fun bore with some IMPORTANT looking buildings, and I don't feel safe driving on it." - me on Facebook.

I'm ready for a change and that change is "re-striping Peachtree." But I don't think we're going to get it. Traffic calming on Peachtree means reducing lanes. Intuition says that would slow traffic at least that's what my intuition said.

But as with so many things in my life, I've changed my mind. Here are some "traffic calming" projects that have improved my life.

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This is Emory University's front door. They spent a bunch on the hardscape - it's Druid Hills after all - but they got it right. Used to be four lanes all the way on North Decatur with a giant intersection. You could go 50 though there if you caught the light right. Now it's just two lanes and we seem to zip right through. Emory students actually use the crosswalks which were formerly "cross-runs-for-you-lives."

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This was a busy place with irritating, dangerous, unpredictable left turns onto Ponce. They removed two lanes and added a dedicated left turn lane. They just changed the stripes. It's still a busy place but now left turns are relatively dreamy. Bravo to the engineers.

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It was an adrenaline surge zone in my family's neighborhood. Two wide streets combined into a Formula One chicane and you could just fly while you rubbernecked over your shoulder. Now it's civilized and I don't miss the speed. You have to wait at the Piedmont or Highland stoplights anyway. But it wasn't perfect until they added the "best 4-way stop sight ever," which made my Kroger runs into pleasure rides.

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BeltLine interference that slows folks down and gets them home just as quick. One pedestrian can push the botton and stop traffic in midblock. Preposterous! Yet instead of stopping once for a long time, you might stop twice for a shorter time while calming the Monroe Drive drag strip. My Kroger runs require a right turn from Cumberland to Monroe. Now it's civilized.


Here's a picture approaching the crosswalk from the south.

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Ansley Park's new pitchers mound is thing all to itself. A circle on Ansley's giant streets must have been spiritual experience for the engineers. Unexpected soil and utility issues must have been a spiritual experience for budgeteers. Ansley has many more too-big intersections. I hope their circles are on hold.


The colossus of mound.

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I think they ran out of money before they got the Fatt Matt Circle just right. Though it slows folks down a bit, folks just don't know how to use it. After a little experience a circle is obvious. This one isn't. The hardscape is too small giving drivers too much leeway.


It's needs to be scaled like the Pitchers Mound. The landscaping is pretty though.

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More later. Ponce de Leon is a whole 'nother traffic calming thing - which I mostly favor.

Believe me, this is an amazingly luxurious space. I visited three times to make sure.

I think there is some golden ratio magic going on in here. The important rooms are either square or golden rectangles and though the ceilings are eleven feet tall, the rooms felt just right to me: They were big but didn't make me feel small. And with big windows, interior windows, French doors and transoms I didn't really need the lights on.

There's a floor plan and a little video in this post if you want to skip ahead.

I spotted estate sale balloons on my Thursday errands. This being Druid Hills I followed them because Druid Hills is a living house museum and I want to see every house.

I got excited as the balloons led me south across Ponce, then west on Fairview to the house I always thought of as BIG GABLE HOUSE.


Though it's on one of Atlanta's most picturesque streets, it stands out. I never thought I'd see inside. There just aren't any houses like this, or are there?

I've followed it for a long, long time.


I've seen it full-frontal naked.


It's kind of beach house style, less formal than most in Druid Hills, not Georgian, not Tudor, not Italianate not Mediterranean. But there are plenty of lovable details. I adore its chunky shingles in straight horizontal lines dressed in pale yellow with curvy-tailed purlins. Were these the original windows?


My Field Guide to American Houses says the Shingle Style lasted from 1880 to 1900. So I guess BIG GABLE HOUSE is "Shingle Revival," being built in the 1920s. I think Atlanta's bona fide shingle styles are mostly in Inman Park, West End, and East Point.


I think BIG GABLE HOUSE is an homage to the William G. Low House in Rhode Island "designed in 1886-87 by architect Charles Follen McKim of the New York City firm, McKim, Mead & White." This side faces the water. It's a really big, that roof is 140 feet wide. It was demolished in 1962.


I'd never been able to judge the size of BIG GABLE HOUSE.


Though it loomed over me as I approached, it was more like a cottage than a mansion. Property tax records say 3,983 square feet.

Let's have a look.


The vestibule was promising.


The big fireplace is right there.

Well wait, this will work better on video. But a few things first.

1. I don't know who designed it.
2. It's now divided into a grandfathered quadraplex and I think that's just fine.
3. There are a big 2-bedroom unit and an efficiency on the first floor.
4. There are two apartment units upstairs.
5. All I saw was the big 2-bedroom.
6. The left and right parlors are the two bedrooms each with huge closet and bath. The right bedroom suite included the enclosed porch.
7. It wasn't staged or decorated but there was a estate sale going on. It was clean, painted and almost move-in ready.
8. This was an amazingly luxurious space.

Let me repeat: This was an amazingly luxurious space and not because of trim, detailing, finishes or fixtures. No. It was the luxury of the volumes, the proportions, the light and the flow.

Here's the plan.




Here is my video route

Here's the video tour.



Here are a few more pictures.


Fireplace detail. It looked perfect.


The big room had beams but the paint was poorly detailed and distracting. I'd guess they hadn't finished. All white would have been fine with me.


Toward the left "parlor." This French door with door-sized sidelight is 100 inches tall. Light galore and it looks well proportioned.


Looking from the left parlor back into the big room.


This window wall separated the big room for the dining room. My camera couldn't show how bright is was.


From the dining room into the big room toward the fireplace and front door. The kitchen door is to the right.


The big room and dinning room are a little bit dressy.


Big door and transom that look just right


The right parlor opened to the now-enclosed porch through French doors with transoms.


The now-enclosed porch reveled in full-shingle-glory.


Sweet enfilade from porch though right parlor into the big room.


I couldn't get to the west porch but I wanted to.


Here's the backside.


In context with the neighbors. BIG GABLE HOUSE stands alone.

I lucky to have seen it.


How about this 1960 tribute on Pinestream?