Beginning in 1963, tourists yearning to experience the world of Gone with the Wind could finally visit the Old South outside Atlanta, Georgia. The Antebellum Plantation was one of the first attractions to open at the state’s new Stone Mountain Park, constructed around the world’s largest Confederate monument. But while the state of Georgia created the park and finished the memorial as part of its campaign against racial integration, it outsourced the plantation to private investors as a for-profit concession. Motivated by personal agendas, these citizens—led by Christie Bell Kennedy, founder of Stone Mountain Plantation Inc.—brought together vernacular historical buildings from across the state, transforming them to create a polished fantasy of White leisure. In The 1960s Antebellum Plantation at Stone Mountain, Georgia, Lydia Mattice Brandt and Philip Mills Herrington provide a careful examination of the history, architecture, and decoration of the Antebellum Plantation, still remarkably unchanged more than fifty years later. Their study reveals a fraught, ad hoc design process long disguised by the graceful big house at the center of the state-owned attraction.
The 1960s Antebellum Plantation at Stone Mountain, Georgia
Lydia Mattice Brandt is an architectural historian and historic preservationist. Her research investigates how Americans use historic architecture to remember the past. She is also coeditor of Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum and president of the Southeast Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians. https://www.lydiabrandt.comPhilip Mills Herrington is an architectural and environmental historian. His scholarship focuses on plantation buildings, antebellum agricultural landscapes, and slavery, particularly in Georgia. His most recent work is a study of how slaveholders in the southern coastal plain used pine forest summer retreats as centers of pleasure and power. [email protected]
Philip Mills Herrington is an architectural and environmental historian. His scholarship focuses on plantation buildings, antebellum agricultural landscapes, and slavery, particularly in Georgia. His recent work is a study of how slaveholders in the southern coastal plain used pine forest summer retreats as centers of pleasure and power. [email protected]
Lydia Mattice Brandt, Philip Mills Herrington; The 1960s Antebellum Plantation at Stone Mountain, Georgia. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 1 March 2022; 81 (1): 63–84. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/jsah.2022.81.1.63
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