Lemuel Grant - Mansion

Mansion

The 1856 Lemuel P. Grant Mansion is one of only three antebellum houses within the current city limits of Atlanta that are still standing in their original locations, and is by far the closest to the city limits in the 1860s. The mansion was owned by Lemuel P. Grant, Atlanta's quintessential railroad man as well as a major landowner and civic leaderafter. Grant donated the land for Grant Park, which was named for him.

The three-story mansion was built in Italianate style in 1856. Union troops burning Atlanta in 1864 spared it because Masonic paraphernalia was found there, and the troops had been instructed not to harm the homes of Masons. In December 2001, the Atlanta Preservation Center purchased the house for $109,000; restoration of, and improvements to the house and grounds are ongoing.

Bobby Jones, the legendary golfer, was born in this home while the Jones family was in town visiting from Canton, GA. Bitsy Grant, the famed tennis player, grew up in this home until the family moved to Ansley Park along 17th Street. Bobby Jones, grandson, Bobby Jones IV is an Anglican priest in Athens Ga.

At this time, Margaret Mitchell, author of Gone with the Wind and niece to Cone Maddox, Sr., director of the Atlanta Cotton Exchange, purchased the home, and then met her untimely death being run down by a taxi in Peachtree Street. The home fell into the possession of caretakers who obtain squatting rights during the settlement of Mitchell's estate. One of the two men destroyed the home by sleeping in bed with a lit cigarette.