I Love the Back Side Most - Neel Reid 1915

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.