Rhodes Hall: Atlanta's Confederate Dream in Granite

Amos Rhodes made his fortune selling furniture and spent nearly fifty thousand dollars building his dream on Peachtree Road. Construction on the Romanesque Revival granite mansion began in nineteen oh two, inspired by the couple's travels through Germany's Rhine Valley. Rhodes and his wife Amanda called it Le Reve, French for The Dream.

Inside, the grand stair hall contains stained glass windows depicting the rise and fall of the Confederacy. The house was completed in nineteen oh four and stands today as one of the last surviving Peachtree mansions from that era. The Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation now calls it home and operates the main floor as a house museum. It is a building that contains two stories at once: a wealthy man's fantasy of European grandeur, and a Lost Cause monument built into the bones.

Architect Willis Denny designed the house. The granite came from Stone Mountain, in blocks of about five hundred pounds hauled by wagon roughly twenty-five miles, and the mahogany came from the West Indies. It was wired for electricity from the start, with over three hundred light bulbs, electric call buttons in most rooms, and even a security system. The windows run from Fort Sumter to Appomattox. After the Rhodes family, the house held the Georgia State Archives from nineteen thirty to nineteen sixty-five, and the Georgia Trust took it over in nineteen eighty-three.