House of the Week

Another Neel Reid Druid Hills house. This one is across the street from last week's house of the week. It was built in 1917 for the Louis Regenstein family and is Italianate in style.



From J. Neel Reid Architect , by William R. Mitchell : "Characteristic of Reid's work was the concentration of a few boldly scaled ornamental elements at focal points on otherwise comparatively plain facades. There is often a hipped roof, villa-like rectangular horizontality, a central block with side porches, sometimes wings, placed in landscape garden settings reached through french doors, very much in the manner of 'casual classicism' of Charles Platt. ...nearly always with the Italian Renaissance villa set in the back of his mind." (pg 74).



The house was for sale recently, here are interior photos from that listing.

House of the Week

Look what I found:



A Neel Reid that is new to me. I have driven by the house on numerous occasions and wondered if it was a Neel Reid. Last weekend I happened upon the owner while he was working in the yard and I learned a lot about the house.



The delightful owner told me that the house was built in 1916 and Neel Reid was the architect. (I can't find the house in any of my Neel Reid books, but the owner was told by a woman who lived in the house as a child in the 1920's.) It was originally painted white and has been a green/gray color and is now yellow. The slate roof and red tile driveway are original, as is the clapboard. The current owners have lived in the house for 32 years and are the longest residing owners of the house. Across the street is another Neel Reid house up on a hill (hint - stay tuned for next week's HOTW).

House of the Week

Hentz, Reid and Adler's Vaughn Nixon house




This has been my very favorite Atlanta house for my entire life. I remember driving by it as a child and thinking this was the perfect house. It sits on Andrews Drive next to the Swan House (Inman house) and is situated in an idyllic setting.

The house was built in 1925-6 for Vaughn Nixon and is one of Neel Reid's last designs - he was dying of brain cancer as the house was completed. It was Neel Reid's homage to the Hammond-Harwood house in Annapolis, Maryland. The Hammond-Harwood house is one of the primary landmarks of colonial American Georgian architecture. The Vaughn Nixon house is not a copy, but was inspired by the Hammond-Harwood house, which was in turn inspired by the Villa Pisani pictured below.




Hammond-Harwood house


Villa Pisani

Of particular inspiration for Reid was the facade and front door, pictured below:




(Please ignore the Halloween decorations on the railing - now you know when I took the photo :))

Here is another Reid facade (Logan Clarke house in Brookwood Hills, 1922) that resembles Hammond-Harwood:



I am thankful to my architect, Brad Heppner, for my Federal style front door - which is not dissimilar to the Georgian doorways above. My entrance has an open pediment, which is common in the Federal or Adams style.



Perhaps Brad was inspired by a federal door like this one:



or this one:




You can click on any of the images to enlarge them.

In honor of the Pink month of October, interior photos of the Pink Palace

The pink month of October is winding down, but my last post of the month is in honor of all the brave women who face breast cancer, the doctors and nurses who treat women with breast cancer and the researchers who search for a cure. I give you the interiors of the Pink Palace, previously posted about here, designed by Neel Reid, Philip Shutze and the firm of Hentz, Reid and Adler. This is the Calhoun house in Atlanta, also known as Trygveson.

At right are doors in the living room, also called the ballroom.


detail from the entrance hall or loggia


Allyn Cox mural from the entrance hall


settee below the mural in the entrance hall


main stair detail in the entrance hall


the living room, also called the ballroom


detail from the living room


another set of doors in the living room


the library


magnificent library ceiling designed by Neel Reid and Philip Shutze


dining room mantel and plasterwork medallion of Michelangelo


view of the mantel with chandelier in the dining room


an upstairs room over the porch - I love the coloration of the plaster

This wonderful house is for sale, listed by Beacham and Co. - click here to see the listing.


Have a great weekend everyone!

all photos by Whitehaven

I stand corrected! On the Pink Palace....

I hate to eat crow - but when you have to, you have to. Roby Robinson, grandson of the Calhouns, contacted us to correct the mistakes in the story told about the Pink Palace. I have edited the post, but the gist of it is that the house was a collaboration between Neel Reid and Philip Shutze, who was a junior draftsman on the job. Need Reid was the primary designer and traveled to Italy several times on buying trips for the house. Shutze was surely involved but not at the level that he later claimed at the end of his life. I stand corrected and now we know the real deal.

House of the Week - The Pink Palace

The Calhoun house with my faithful tour companion sitting in front.


photograph above by Van Jones Martin

It had to be this house. My daughter and I went on the Beacham and Co. sponsored Special Olympics house tour yesterday, and this was the feature house - The Pink Palace or Trygveson as it was named by the Calhouns (the name "Trygveson" comes from the Welsh version of the last name of Mary Guy Trigg, wife of Andrew Calhoun, the original owner), designed by Neel Reid and Philip Shutze. There seems to be much debate about the design credit on this 1923 beauty, which was owned by the Calhoun family. So, let me tell you the story. (I have edited this post after hearing from the son of Louise and Roby Robinson).


The view from the motor court, photography by Van Jones Martin

In 1919 the Calhouns hired the architecture firm of Hentz, Reid and Adler to design their house on Peachtree Rd. Philip Shutze was in Europe studying at that time. The first set of plans for the house were not as Italianate (Shutze did not work on those) and the Calhouns never built that house. They instead bought 100 acres of land on West Paces Ferry Road and by that point Shutze had returned from Europe. In 1922 he then took on the design of the Calhoun house with the rest of the design team at Hentz, Reid and Adler and it was this revised version of the house that the Calhouns built. It was based loosely on the Villa Allegri Arvedi in Cuzzano, Italy , which Shutze had visited in 1919.


Villa Allegri Arvedi


The Calhoun house in the 1920's as seen from W. Paces Ferry Rd, from American Classicist by Elizabeth Dowling


Villa Allegri Arvedi

The Northern facade of the Calhoun house is based on the Villa Gori, near Siena. Illustration by Paul Giambarda below. In her book American Classicist, Elizabeth Dowling descibes the garden facade as "exuberant baroque." "Numerous photographs of the Villa Gori appear in Shutze's scrapbooks" (p.70).




The house stayed in the Calhoun family until 1958, when its owners, Roby and Louise Calhoun Robinson, sold the house to the Thornwell family. The Thornwell family lived there for more than 50 years. When the house was sold to the Thornwells it only included 3-4 acres of land, the rest of the land was sold to developers Gene and Jerry Cates who developed Pinestream and Pinemeadow Rds.

I asked my grandmother, who grew up in Atlanta and was a good friend of the Calhouns and Robinsons, whether she thought the house was designed by Reid or Shutze, and she said that there has always been a debate about the architect. Roby Robinson, son of Louise and Roby, has told us that Reid was the primary architect on the house, with Shutze as a junior draftsman on the team. Apparently late in his life Shutze claimed that the house was solely his own, but this was in fact not true. Neel Reid, not Philip Shutze, traveled to Italy several times to purchase furniture for the house.

Yesterday at the house tour, I had the pleasure of meeting Elizabeth Meredith Dowling, author of American Classicist, the Architecture of Philip Trammel Shutze. She and I chatted about the house. When writing her book about Shutze she spoke with a decorator who helped Shutze on the house. He remembered seeing Shutze up on a ladder hand applying the tint to the exterior stucco. The house was a Hentz, Reid, Adler Atlanta version of an Italian Villa.






























This magnificent house is currently for sale. The listing is here. Will have more photos of the house later this week.

Unless otherwise specified, photographs by Whitehaven.