I went to The 2021 Southeastern Designer Showhouse & Gardens on the very last day. Here's the program.

I haven't been to a show house since before COVID, I haven't blogged in forever. How do I do this thing?

Here are some pictures.

 

Jean Cocteau, not for sale.

What a floor border.

Ladies closet.

Master bath and shower galore.

Drama stair, detail of mural by Penshaw Hill, founded by fifth generation artist Bethany Travis

Bar on other side of window. This is the outdoor salon. Design Melanie Turner Interiors Mural by Penshaw Hill

Tall ceilings = tall stairs. Curvy ledge.

I'm in the really nice butler's pantry looking into the kitchen.

In the kitchen looking into the butlers pantry.

That stair has drama on the way down.

For me the coziest space was the pantry, a retreat off the kitchen.

Look

The other Jean Cocteau.

 Thanks.

When I'm lucky, I get to take JoAnn to the salon. While she gets her "do" done, I explore.
 
I was a bit anxious about leaving JoAnn hanging, and didn't realize my phone was on mute. So I decided to chance it and do Part 2. It was about 4:45.

Part 2: The four restaurants at the corner of  North Highland Avenue at Colquitt: Folk Art, Il Localino, North Highland Pub, and Wisteria. The Wisteria block. (See Part 1: How to Explore Inman Park Edges While Getting a Hairdo Pt. 1 of 2 Fallen Arrows and The Dickey)



In order: Wisteria, North Highland Pub, Il Localino, Folk Art. Unless you are on foot, this is the way we see them. I'd never even walked the sidewalk, time for the Architecture Tourist to spring into action.



Why would you put four restaurants in two attached buildings? It was a mystery from my smallish town youth. Then I discovered food courts.




Folk Art is on the corner of Colquitt, has this nice sign with breakfast all day and lunch and dinner.



Folk Art is a squarish space divided into comfortable niches with a view. Lots of ways to sit. It even has some counter seats right behind me.

Cute. I want to eat there, every day.



Then Il Localino. Honestly I didn't even know it was there. It's a narrow front, can't see into the windows. It had just opened for dinner.



Good grief, it's a total red-themed, white table-clothed, attentive-waiters-in-black, Italian restaurant with three (3) dining rooms. This picture is the main dining room looking from the bar toward the front door.

Cute. I want to eat here every day too.



North Highland Pub is an 11am to 3am joint. There are always folks in there when I drive by.


It's deeper than it is wide with tall metal tiled ceiling, brick floor with plenty of standing and elbow room.



Here's the giant Loews Grand Gone With the Wind Premier mural.

Cute, I'll have a beer and bar food every day.



Wisteria is the northern most.



It's what's for dinner.



Communal inline tables, breathing room.



I'd like to sit in this window, watch folks on the sidewalk, see everybody that enters and leaves.



Wow, an un-tagged wall.



Now you know.

Thanks for joining me. Let's eat.


(See Part 1: How to Explore Inman Park Edges While Getting a Hairdo Pt. 1 of 2 Fallen Arrows and The Dickey)

After her extraordinary talk I told Isabel Castilla, "It's like a dagger to an Atlantan's heart if you..."

"If you don't say the Atlanta BeltLine is the coolest thing EVER."

"I didn't say anything about the BeltLine," she replied.

"Yeah that hurts just as much."

"But no two (corridor reclamation projects) are the same."

"Certainly not, but it still hurts."



Kate Allen with Isabel Castilla for the poster signing. Isabel Castilla is Principal at James Corner Field Operations currently the lead designer and project manager the for Section 3 of New York’s High Line; Miami Beach’s Lincoln Road District; and The Underline in Miami, a 10-mile long corridor of parkland, trails and neighborhood connections. 

I'm embarrassed for Atlanta that you weren't there. It was the annual Doug Allen lecture, and we had a High Line designer.

“Landscape architecture concentrates on anything open to the sky.” - Isabel Castilla

Make plans right now, clear your calendar for the Fall of 2018 or have an excuse from the doctor.

Deprovincializing BeltLine-Like Projects

The is my first lecture about a BeltLine-Like project that wasn't given by Ryan Gravel.

More on that another time.



You should'a been there. Look who is building on the High Line.



Who knows when there will be a pop quiz on peel-up bench typologies?

See ya'

We don't know how much is Neel Reid, how much is Hentz, Reid & Adler, how much is not. Away from the big public rooms things get less Neel Reid-y don't you think? Brown marble floors for example, don't harmonize with the front rooms, not to my eye anyway. 

Here's part one: Philip McDuffie House (1922) Hentz, Reid & Adler, a "Neel Reid" Part 1 of ? 


"Floral" would describe the dining room.

My interior pictures don't convey the house. So here's a little video.



Here are all my pictures.

Thanks,
Terry

If Neel Reid himself walked though the front door of 7 Cherokee today, he'd likely say, "You haven't changed this foyer in 90 years! Let's get to work." That's what I think anyway.

The new owners are renovating and adding on. They are removing some of the fancy woodwork in the public rooms. "Fancy?" I really mean HEROIC. Are they ruining a "Neel Reid?" Someone said Yong Pak and Pak Heydt & Associates will be working on it. Take comfort.

It's taken me two weeks to publish a few pictures with captions. How to start when it's a legend? I don't know the names of styles or design details. How much of this did Neel Reid personally design? Did he set foot inside once it was done or decorated? How much has changed in the last 90 years?

My pictures and videos are so lame in telling you about the house but I'll show you a few in the blog. Here are links to my 7 Cherokee pictures in Flickr, my four 7 Cherokee videos in YouTube and a nice biography of Philip McDuffie from Buckhead Heritage. Phillip McDuffie developed Garden Hills among other things.

I don't get invited to these places so I follow estate sales. Once in a while I get lucky, this one thanks to VT Estate Sales.



This is as close can you get without an invitation. 8,562 square feet on 4 acres. My impression is the "whole" rather than the parts, a single composition.

Peachtree Heights West, has been of Atlanta's prestigious neighborhoods for 90 years. There's a nest of Neel Reid's (and more) surrounding the intersection of Andrews and Cherokee.


There's the gate. Looks like money wasn't the issue.


I got stuck at the gate wondering if I could process the house.


Gate details. Original? Neel Reid? James Means? There are many more pineapples and lanterns and lamps ahead.

 

The triple double-windows to the left are the front of the narrow end of the living-room / library. Not a weed in the lawns, the gardens, or the driveway.



Fancy balustraded wall and steps, fancy for the cars.



Even the tire stops are fancy.



Here you go. My long eye says: symmetrical, balanced, harmonious. My close eye wonders: how many design decisions, how many measurements to make harmony? How many budget decisions, value engineering? Do people live here, have consulate parties and debutante receptions? All and more I think.



I felt more important than intimidated. Did the medallions, niches and urns have to be just so?



I've got to stop here for now. Let me tease you with one picture from the inside.


This would be the dining room.

Thanks,
Terry