Thank you for joining me in my travels around the South. It’s been a great year of wandering backroads and a few main ones. If I learned anything, it is that people love abandoned houses, buildings with unexpected histories, and (in)famous graves.
Category Archives: Abandoned
Georgia Mental Health Institute, A Popular Atlanta Film Location
The Georgia Mental Health Institute (GMHI) was opened in 1965 on Asa Candler Jr.’s Briarcliff estate grounds. The Brutalist building was a psychiatric hospital built as a joint project between Emory University and the state of Georgia. Emory doctors provided some of the patient care, and Emory medical students received some of their training at the hospital.
The Institute was dedicated on November 18, 1965. Outside the main administration building, the campus had several cottages where patients stayed. These cottages all had tunnels leading to the main building.
GMHI closed in 1997. Emory University purchased the campus in hopes of turning it into another campus, but the idea was never implemented. While the building was in disuse, the Atlanta film industry took off, and the space began being utilized for filming. Most notably, the building was used as the Hawkins National Laboratory in the Netflix TV show Stranger Things. In 2022, Emory University leased the campus to be used as a senior living community. It is expected that many of the buildings will be demolished.
Briarcliff, The Mansion of Asa “Buddie” Candler Jr. In Atlanta, Georgia
Asa “Buddie” Candler Jr. (1880-1953) was the son of Asa Griggs Candler (1851-1929), a politician and businessman wbo purchased the Coca-Cola recipe from John Pemberton in 1888. Buddie Candler helped build the Coca-Cola empire as helped in the development of bottling locations across the United States.
Known as a bit of an iconoclast, Buddie Candler did things his way (I highly recommend Sara Butler’s book and website for a deep dive into Buddie’s life story). In 1910, Candler moved from the elite neighborhood, Inman Park, to Briarcliff Farm. By 1916, the farmhouse life was no longer for him, and he wanted to build a palatial estate on the property.
Architect Charles Frazier designed the home, which was completed in 1922. The Georgian Revival home was expanded several times over the years. It featured a music room, a commercial-sized kitchen, seven bedrooms, and a solarium, among other things. The estate featured a zoo, servants’ quarters, tennis courts, stables, greenhouses, and a community pool. The zoo featured a collection of animals that were eventually given to start the Grant Park Zoo.
The home was sold in 1948 as a veterans hospital, but that never happened. It became the Georgian Clinic, later the Dekalb County Addiction Center. It later became part of the Georgia Mental Health Institute.
The building is now owned by Emory University, and plans are underway to restore it and turn it into a nursing home.
Mysterious Eclectic I-House in Folsom, Georgia
Folsom, Georgia, is an unincorporated town in Bartow County, Georgia. A post office was established in 1886 and discontinued in 1917. Interestingly, the town is named after Frances Folsom Cleveland, the wife of Grover Cleveland and the youngest first lady in history. (She married Cleveland at the age of 21 in the White House.)
This I-House is a complete mystery. The plot maps and tax records do not include a house on the land, and my usual sources for building history have not been helpful. My friend Brian thinks it was moved there. I asked in a Facebook group, and one person knows it has been there for at least thirty years.
I spent time staring at the house’s facade. While it’s been heavily modified, it reminds me of the Higdon Hotel in Reliance, Tennessee. The bars on the lower windows made me wonder if the first floor was a store and the second floor was the living quarters.
Updated: Audrey Franklin shared that this used to be the Adcock House. The family ran a store on the first floor and lived on the second floor. Still not sure why this building doesn’t show on tax records, but it’s at least less of a mystery now.
The James and Lily Gaines House of Adairsville, Georgia
The James and Lily Gaines House was built by Prussian architect, John Schmitz, in 1901 as a “Honeymoon House.” Schmitz relocated to Bartow County after serving in the Civil War as a Union soldier. His architectural work can be seen throughout Bartow County.
The home is a rare example of a brick Queen Anne home in Georgia. Built into a hill, the home faces downtown and the rail line. It is believed the bricks came in via the rail since there isn’t a record of a brick manufacturer in the area until 1906.
A long-rumored story about the home is that it was a hospital with a tunnel to the nearby funeral parlor. Unfortunately, this does not seem to be verifiable. It did serve as a hotel at one point.
Information on the house was culled from Maggie Ball’s research of the home.
Saddlebag House-Talbotton, Georgia
Saddlebags houses are two-room homes with a center chimney that heats both rooms. This type of house evolved from single-pin (room) houses, one-room homes with a fireplace. This type of house is a common vernacular form in Georgia.
