UPDATE April 9, 2014

That's the spirit!

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Original post:
Folks said I'd fall in love and I did. I never expected to see it again but I had hopes. It was 7,000+ square feet perfectly sited on 5 acres, a landmark in Atlanta's most prestigious neighborhood. From Habersham it seemed a perfectly framed hilltop folly in the form of a Greek temple. Yet this giant house wasn't intimidating. It was a family home scaled for humans.

Thank goodness I took a few exterior pictures. Here's what it looks like today "Huge Buckhead home goes up in flames" - Atlanta Journal Constitution.

Rodolfo Castro invited me to Buckhead in Bloom, a fundraiser for the Atlanta Preservation Center. That was April 11, 2010, four years before the Cam Dorsey Residence burned down.

We lost two great houses in two weeks: the Aronstam House burned on March 18 and now this.

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It's a Neel Reid Design, Hentz, Reid & Adler Job 527 1923-24 (See J.Neel Reid Architect: Of Hentz, Reid & Adler & the Georgia School of Classicists by William R. Mitchell Jr.). Photo is from 1929, image purchased from the Atlanta History Center.


A winged Cape Cod with porticoes everywhere.

This is the Vernon side, the back side, the main entry that you can't see from the street.


Photo is from 1929, image purchased from the Atlanta History Center. See below for the precedent of the polygonal porch.


Neel Reid got it right the first time and gave it a motif for integrating additions.



You could see all the way through to the Hambersham side, through the picturesque portico visible from Habersham.


It's a low rambling complex with sheltering porches and no steps.


Four porches in a row.



This is the view from Habersham. 1929 image purchased from the Atlanta History Center.


The portico you could see from Habersham was a glassed-in sun room.


It was all shutters, gables and porticoes. 1929 image purchased from the Atlanta History Center.


The additions kept the spirit.


From the street you'd never know.

What about the polygonal porch?


Photo by Rictor Norton & David Allen from Flickr.
Polygonal entrance from George Mason "Gunston Hall" River front entrance. Thanks to Robert Craig for telling me about it.

I should have taken 500 pictures. I was short of time on my first visit, my battery died on the second. I thought I'd never see it again and I was right - but for a different reason.

Last Tuesday it burned. I blogged it in 2012 "Unstaged, academic, and emotional: the Aronstam House by Pringle and Smith 1928 ." I'm replaying that post today with fire pictures and my new comments italicized.

As I entered, I lost my focus and objectivity. I needed a plan, days of preparation, and a camera bigger than my head to take it in. So I just let go and wandered around. This is the most fun an architecture tourist can have on a weekday.

Last Tuesday I spotted balloons on Ponce de Leon and turned down Lullwater. There it was, a hilltop Druid Hills mansion, almost 6000 square feet on a couple of acres, open for a few hours. You just don't get to do this unless you are in the business.


Sunday morning after the Tuesday night fire.

It's by Pringle and Smith. I wondered if it was in Robert Craig's new book, "The Architecture of Francis Palmer Smith, Atlanta's Scholar Architect" Yes it is, on pages 82-83, but that doesn't settle everything. The tax records say 1924, the book says 1928.


It's way up there and a bit overgrown.


It was still smouldering on Wednesday morning, white haze with campfire smell.


Robert Craig:
"For suburban dwellers in Druid Hills and Peachtree Heigths Park, a Georgian Revival residence brought adequate sophistication and elegance without the domineering scale or show of a palatial country house."


On Sunday you couldn't tell when the fire was.


Robert Craig:
"...main focus is the elaborate entry-door frame. Here a broken swan's-neck pediment with an urn finial recalls... (the) south door of Westover..."

This is a big house but it doesn't seem THAT big. It's just 5 bays.


It doesn't seem that big from the front but it's like there's a back house behind the front house.

It was a slog up the driveway to the front door, not girl scout cookie friendly. I doubt many folks used the front door.


One pilaster and the front door were still there, the "broken swan's-neck pediment with an urn finial" wasn't.


As I approached, the house began revealing it age.


Here's the left capital.

Walk inside with me: The wall-papered foyer, the grand arch to the stair hall, to the dining room. On the right the library, to the left the living room and doorways to the to the enclosed porch and dining room.



Robert Craig:
"...the formality of the facade has given way to the lifestyle of the modern suburbanite, and Pringle and Smith planning reflects the freer movement from room to room of occupants not governed by the authority of absolute classicism."


The library.

I had just a few minutes.

Mrs. Robinson said only two families lived there, one raised 5 children there but no one had lived there in more than a decade.


It was the real thing. I was looking from the stair hall through the great arch across the foyer into the living room.


I felt like I should be there.

It had been cleaned out a bit but it hadn't been staged. It was in "lived-in" condition rather than move-in condition. The basement looked and smelled all of its nearly 90 years, a realistic smell, not a bad small.


I'd never seen Greek key in crown molding before.




Bulges, fluting, spider webs, and acanthus leaves are refined and quiet.


The green tile in the now "hanging bath" caught my eye.


The lower arch leads to the side door. Surely this area was a busy place for a family of 7. In Shutze's Knollwood, an elaborate stair is front and center, not here.

Robert Craig:
"The 'front and center' entry of the Aronstam residence leads to a center hall, but ells to the right, halfway back, to reveal the main stair hall set off to one side."


I loved the stairs, sturdy and wide, lit from the north. I imagined kids banging their way up and down day and night.


Here's a 1908 picture of Stephenson Shale Brick Co.'s Plant, Lovick, Jefferson County, Ala..


The bedrooms are upstairs. They open to this big hall. What do "modern" folks do with a room like this?


This is a Jack and Jill bath. The bathrooms aren't my style but I fell in love. They are all like this. I weep to think of them redecorated, gutted.


All the bathrooms were in this style.

I was lost in thought when I realized I was alone, they were closing up.


I'd not seen anything and I'd wouldn't get another chance.


Some shutters escaped the flames.



Louis Aronstam was president on Southern GF Steel which remains a going concern after 100 years.


This was not fun. But I don't think this house is done.

Update 3-feb-2012 thanks to John Wrede for a link to The Goose’s 99-Year History: From Candlers to Paideia see page 7.

This Mother Goose burned in October 2009. She's back.


It was a house turned school building for the Atlanta's Paideia School, It was a fine house if not a mansion in Druid Hills.


The ruins made an interesting sight but didn't make me feel very good.




This was grand.




I can't find before pictures from any era. This is the north side, front porch on the left.


You can see how much of the chimneys showed above the roof.


Hint's of the grand old house.


The fire didn't get down here, no sign of soot.



Mother Goose is back.


Old on the left, new on the right.


No chimneys.




Was Mother Goose on the old porch?

Look at the arches in the basement. This is the east side.


The west side.


Nice chunky details.


The new Goose is quite good, purpose-designed for the school, modern, safe, three times the space.

But this isn't the way we wanted it to happen.


Long live Mother Goose.