so 
House & Garden 
The Coleman house in Macon, Ga., built in 1835, is one of the few houses designed by a professional architect. It is ex¬ 
ceptionally fine handling of the Roman Doric order. All the walls are of brick stuccoed. The columns are whitewashed 
THE CLASSIC HOMES OF OLD GEORGIA 
This Pleasant Section When Living Was a Fine Art Expressed 
Itself in Dignified Neo-Grecque Types 
RUTH DRAPER 
T HE world and Mr. 
Mencken do not know 
that out of the black¬ 
ness of what he is pleased 
to call “Darkest Georgia” 
shine some of the loveliest 
lights of American archi¬ 
tecture. What remains of 
pre-Revolution building — 
what fire and the Indians 
did not destroy—shows the 
usual Georgian qualities 
that in the Colonies came 
to their flower in Annapo¬ 
lis, on the James and in 
Charleston. But in the 
Classic Revival Georgia 
came into her own and 
found her stride in a type 
that was so perfectly adapt¬ 
ed to the requirements of 
climate and living condi¬ 
tions while satisfying the 
desire for beauty which 
animated her planter-archi¬ 
tects, that they seized on it 
I 4 * 
1 < 
[t < i 
rt 
In this house in La Grange the balcony between the bays and the frieze are both inter¬ 
esting details. La Grange has many lovely examples of these classic old houses, showing 
wide variations achieved by the planter builders 
and made it theirs, trans¬ 
lated the type into their 
vernacular and vividly ex¬ 
pressed themselves. 
The end of the 18th and 
beginning of the 19th Cen¬ 
turies left in Georgia the 
sort of dwellings in which 
the sons of Mary made of 
living a fine art. While 
the sons of Martha in New 
England were still building 
their chaste rectangles with 
flat fenestration and thin 
ornamentation, the warmer 
sunshine of Georgia in con¬ 
junction with a more cava¬ 
lier heritage had caused a 
large receptivity to the 
classic furor which had 
taken the rest of the world. 
There is nothing bleak 
about the scene in Georgia. 
It is a mellow, rolling coun¬ 
try with sweetly lilting hills 
(Continued on page 72) 
