Please Repeat: A House That Took My Breath Away

I can't get it out of my head and I don't want to. Last weekend I toured one of our region's greatest places, an antebellum private house. I never expected to see it and don't expect to see it again.

It was alive that afternoon with family guests dining at temporary tables in the library, a picked over pot luck buffet in the dining room, multiple plastic coolers on the front porch, a dozen performers packing up in the parlor, exchange students playing the out-of-tune piano. Sheets covered some shoved together furniture anticipating a garage sale. Joe and I chatted with our host in the foyer, as grand and as comfortable as a room could be. And there wasn't one spec of decorator-show-house, not that I could see.

All this life where folks have lived continually for 100+ years, I was quite moved.

We continue to build mansions by the boatload. Why not build them just like this?

It reminds me of my favorite room in Atlanta, the L.P. Grant Mansion's drawing room:


Please repeat.