The purpose of this blog will be to put a number of different repositories of information into one space.  The entries may be edited from time to time to ensure more up-to-date and accurate information.

This all started when our family purchased and moved into an old house in Atlanta, Georgia near Chastain Park.

This is a picture of the house as it looked in 2009 when our family first saw it.  The house had enough bedrooms to accommodate our family and was old enough to accommodate our taste in ‘older’ architecture.  We learned a few things about the house before we moved in, including that it listed as being built in 1935 and had been slated for the wrecking-ball.  Yes, there was a plan to tear the house down.  The property had passed to an estate in 2007 upon a prior owner’s death.  The property sat on 3.5 acres of land.  This was 2007 in the Buckhead section of Atlanta.  There was a massive real estate boom.  The buyer from the estate speculated that the land was worth more subdivided than the old house plus the land.  The buyer reportedly purchased a contiguous 0.5 acre property without even seeing the inside of the house.  With roughly 4 acres of land, the speculator worked with a surveying company to carve the land into smaller parcels.  Some neighbors would later report a proposal for thirteen houses in the proposed subdivision.  The buyer stated the maximum proposed was five houses.  The proposal included tearing the old house down, cutting a cul-de-sac, and building a retention pond.  The proposal for five was approved by the City of Atlanta Planning & Zoning Committee as well as city council.  Then, the bubble burst!

The housing bubble bursting and great economic meltdown erased vast quantities of wealth and created massive problems for large numbers of people globally.  But, it saved this old house.

Our family did not save the house – – the economy did.  We just came along at a time when we were looking to move.  We became attached to the house and the land.  We moved into the house in December 2010.  We learned a lot more about the history of the house and the surrounding area after moving in.  Subsequent posts will detail various portions of that discovered history, including pre-1900 history, the land, the first owners, the architect, the builder, the landscape architect, the roof, the light fixtures, the mantle carvings, the outdoor fireplace, the interior details, the grave, the second owners, the NFL connection, the burn pits, the bottles, the tea plants, the trees, and others.