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Friday, March 11, 2016

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:

IMG_20160219_134336 2016-02-19 William R Prescott house 799 Clifton Neel Reid Road design 1915 Job 275
Where life happens.

20160219_120644 2016-02-19 William R Prescott house 799 Clifton Neel Reid Road design 1915 Job 275
With embracing shapes that hug the garden and hug the people.

20160219_120621 2016-02-19 William R Prescott house 799 Clifton Neel Reid Road design 1915 Job 275
The kitchen and back steps are in here.

20160219_121026 2016-02-19 William R Prescott house 799 Clifton Neel Reid Road design 1915 Job 275
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.

20160219_121037 2016-02-19 William R Prescott house 799 Clifton Neel Reid Road design 1915 Job 275
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.

20160219_120606 2016-02-19 William R Prescott house 799 Clifton Neel Reid Road design 1915 Job 275
Sleeping porch above. People attractor below. Chunky cornices with details galore. What do you call those asterisks? They animate everything.

20160219_120543 2016-02-19 William R Prescott house 799 Clifton Neel Reid Road design 1915 Job 275
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.

20160219_120225 2016-02-19 William R Prescott house 799 Clifton Neel Reid Road design 1915 Job 275
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.

20160219_120836 2016-02-19 William R Prescott house 799 Clifton Neel Reid Road design 1915 Job 275
There's a house in the back of the back.

3 comments:

  1. the asterisks are Roman modeled on the baths of diocletion (I feel so smart knowing that random trivia haha)
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baths_of_Diocletian

    ReplyDelete
  2. Calder Loth on the "Diacleian Window" the "asterisks" http://blog.classicist.org/?p=6133

    ReplyDelete