It will come as no surprise to anyone that Peachtree Street was not always the bastion of business that it is today. At the turn of the 20th century, Peachtree Street was a tree-lined avenue with magnificent mansions on either side. It was a neighborhood…a neighborhood filled with well-to-do residents but a neighborhood none the less.
One of the most celebrated of the houses that lined Peachtree was the Lyden House. Margaret Mitchell referenced it in her novel Gone With The Wind. Rhett Buttler was said to have lived next door. In reality, the Governor of Georgia lived next door, in the Governor’s mansion, which gives you an idea of the type of homes to be found on Peachtree. And like all of the great Peachtree Street homes, the Lyden House did not see the end of the century as the business of business took over Peachtree Street.
One by one, the great homes that used to line Atlanta’s most famous street were torn down, and though none survived, the memory of one lives on today much stronger than any of the others, which is why it is the subject of this week’s Stories of Atlanta.
Actually, the Leyden House did survive to see the end of the century–if you’re speaking of the 19th Century. When Asa Candler began his press northward in the development of the business culture of Atlanta, he acquired the Leyden House property and had the mansion razed; however, the beautiful, stately columns were acquired and incorporated into the Woodbury School, a private school, which was even further north in the new automobile neighborhood of Ansley Park and an academy that Margaret Mitchell attended when her family moved to Peachtree Street just north past 17th Street. Asa Candler had Leyden House razed in the early 1920s as he was developing the formerly residential area in that neighborhood and built the magnificent white marble “skyscraper” The Candler Building.