Category: Architecture of Atlanta and the Southeast

The Background

The following article, published in The Atlanta Journal in April 1890, describes the Confederate Soldiers’ Home in Atlanta, completed in 1891 and designed by A.C. Bruce of Bruce & Morgan.

Planned to house 150 to 200 people,² the facility was built on 125 acres located two miles southeast of Atlanta and connected to Grant Park³ by a 1.5-mile dirt road that became known as Confederate Avenue (later United Avenue SE).

The Origins of the Home

The project was first proposed in April 1889 by Henry W. Grady, editor of The Atlanta Constitution, although it was hardly his own conception.

In late 1888 and early 1889, Major Joe E. Stewart of Austin, Texas, traveled to the Northeast and began fundraising appeals in Boston and New York to support an existing home for Confederate veterans in Austin.^{4 5}

Why Stewart considered that a good idea was anyone’s guess, since no self-respecting Northener would’ve given a damn about aiding the ex-soldiers of a treasonous rebellion. As the Mail and Express of New York opined bluntly:

“Major Stewart’s advocacy of the scheme for a Confederate Soldiers’ Home will not find favor here. That is not a matter of National concern…but is distinctly anti-National and to be discouraged.”⁶

Needless to say, Stewart’s ill-conceived fundraising tour was a failure, and the soldiers’ home in Austin, Texas, received only $1500 in donations from Northern contributors.⁷

Always full of self-righteous fervor, Henry Grady seized on the story in one of his typical bloviating editorials for the Constitution, proclaiming that Confederate soldiers should be aided by Southern money, making an impassioned plea to build a veterans’ home in Georgia for those who “suffered in her cause” — that is to say, those who fought for human slavery. Spare me the states’ rights bullshit.

Grady wrote, in part:

“Come home, Major Stewart, and let us take care our heroes to our own hearts, and wear them there, never to be paraded again with their limping gait, their poor wounds and their shabby raiment through the lines of strangers, of whom charity is begged for their behalf!

“But we need Confederate Homes! In every state there are men wearing honorable scars who are poor and helpless.

“WE MUST BUILD A CONFEDERATE HOME in GEORGIA! We must built it at once! We must show that Georgia’s heart beats true to the men who suffered in her cause–and that she will take them to her heart!”⁸

Grady began a public fundraising campaign for the project, with the Constitution contributing the first $1,000. The campaign reportedly received over $10,000 in pledges within 12 hours of the newspaper’s distribution,⁹ and nine days later, an organization overseeing the project was incorporated with a board of 25 directors led by Grady.¹⁰ Credit them for moving quickly.

Design and Construction

While it was initially reported that the project’s building committee accepted a plan by W.T. Downing of Wheeler & Downing,¹² G.L. Norrman also submitted plans, and A.C. Bruce¹³ of Bruce & Morgan ultimately secured the commission.¹⁴ It undoubtedly helped that A.C. Bruce was also a Confederate veteran.

Looking every bit like a fashionable summer hotel, Bruce’s design for the Confederate Soldiers’ Home was one of his better efforts: a rambling structure of two to three stories, primarily Queen Anne style, with all the expected eclecticism and embellishments of the era, including a 120-foot-tall turret.

Construction began in November 1889,¹⁵ and the building’s cornerstone was laid in a public ceremony on Confederate Memorial Day, April 26, 1890.^{16 17} The structure was completed in January 1891,^{18 19} and while the project was initially estimated at $22,000,²⁰ the final cost was $27,699.25.²¹

Another Lost Cause

Although the Constitution set a goal of $50,000 in subscriptions for the project,^{22 23 24} the Confederate Soldiers’ Home ultimately received just over $41,000, leaving only $41.01 in available funds at the building’s completion.²⁵ Henry Grady died in December 1889, and it’s safe to assume the project’s funding faltered in the absence of his leadership.

The project’s directors should have taken a cue from Atlanta’s Carrie Steele Orphans’ Home, which was under construction at the same time and similarly funded by popular subscription. The original plans for the orphanage — also designed by Bruce & Morgan — were apparently dropped in favor of a simpler structure to accommodate reduced funding.

We’re talking about Atlanta, though, where show and spectacle have always been prioritized over fiscal responsibility, and one of the directors of the veterans’ home project even admitted that the committee splurged on “extras in the form of a slate roof, etc.,” adding at least $1000 to the total cost.²⁶

As it became clear that the organization lacked the funds to operate its shiny new facility, the directors decided to unload it on the State of Georgia, offering the entire property to the state government on the condition that it shelter veterans for 25 years, after which it could be used for other purposes.^{27 28} Too bad the state didn’t want it.

In November 1890, a bill was introduced in the state legislature to operate the home as a public facility,²⁹ although it was defeated in August 1891.³⁰ A similar bill was shelved in December 1892,^{31 32} and a third attempt was killed when lawmakers deferred it to a finance committee.³³

Partially fueling the legislature’s refusals was the simmering resentment Georgia’s bumfuck politicians have long held against the city, knowing full well the state would be Mississippi without Atlanta. Some legislators apparently dismissed the project as a typical Atlanta “speculative scheme,”^{34 35} and frankly, they weren’t entirely wrong on that count.

In 1894, the Confederate Soldiers’ Home even became a contentious topic in the state’s gubernatorial race. The leading candidate was William Yates Atkinson, a former speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives, who voted against the home and actively denounced the project on the campaign trail, telling attendees at one event:

“The friends of the home didn’t care anything about it, but they wanted it accepted because it was located in Atlanta.

“That home was a regular poor house and they wanted to send you needy veterans to that Atlanta poor house, where you would be under a master to whom you would have to beg like a slave for the necessities of life.”³⁶

Oh, the irony.

Atkinson won the election, and in January 1895, the Confederate Soldiers’ Home was “still uninhabited, save by a lone watchman,”³⁷ when the organization decided to sell the property.^{38 39}

Myth and Mayhem

By the mid-to-late 1890s, it had become glaringly obvious that the New South myth was utter bullshit. The chief promulgator, Henry Grady, was long dead, and like the grand mansions that sat vacant for years in Atlanta’s Inman Park, the Confederate Soldiers’ Home was left to rot because no one could pony up the cash — even for the soldiers of Georgia’s vaunted “cause.”

The decision to sell the facility prompted a lawsuit from the local real estate company that initially donated the land, claiming they had done so with the understanding that the property would be used solely for a veterans’ home.⁴¹

The trial ended with a judge’s order to sell the property,^{42 43} but an effort to sell in April 1896⁴⁴ was apparently dropped, and a second attempt in 1897 was delayed by the Daughters of the Confederacy, who wanted another chance to woo the state legislature into operating the facility.⁴⁵ That also failed.

A published description of the property in 1897 portrayed a bleak scene:

“The home is three stories high and is of beautiful architecture. It was once painted, but no one would at present suspect it.

“The sides are weather beaten and many of the planks are beginning to decay. The old windmill with the tank on the top is now grown up with vines and shows that it has not been in use for some time. The walks, which wind in and about the premises in the immediate neighborhood of the building, and which were once well kept, are now grown up with grass and weeds.

“The approach to the home for a quarter of a mile is almost as gloomy as the building itself, and one would suspect that he was in the neighborhood, even though the building had not been sighted. The street car track which was laid when the home was built and when it was thought that there was no doubt but what it would soon be inhabited by many veterans, is now in a state of decay. The rails are rusty, the bed has in many places caved in and is covered with weeds.

“The little road which had been graded along side, is now grown up with shrubbery, and the lizards dart away at the approach of a chance pedestrian.”⁴⁶

In April 1898, an attempt to sell the home on the steps of the Fulton County Courthouse was halted because the highest bid was only $10,000.⁴⁷

A year later, another public auction resulted in an even lower winning bid: $8,000, offered by Joel Hurt,⁴⁸ who reportedly “had not intended to buy the property when he went to the sale, and only did it to help the veterans out.”⁴⁹

That sale was also denied,⁵⁰ and the property remained unsold and vacant, with no hope of eventual use in sight.

A Blaze of Glory

In 1900, nearly ten years after the Confederate Soldiers’ Home was completed, a group of Confederate veterans, led by Major W.T. Gary,⁵¹ once again lobbied the Georgia legislature to operate the facility, aided by the recommendation of a new, more sympathetic governor, Allen D. Candler.⁵²

Worn down by the state’s repeated rejections, it was a shock to everyone involved when the Soldiers’ Home Bill was passed in December 1900 by a vote of 106 to 50,^{53 54} and the facility finally opened on June 3, 1901.^{55 56}

Ah, but it’s Atlanta, so you know there’s a shitty twist ending.

Before it had been occupied for even four months, the Confederate Soldiers’ Home was destroyed by fire on September 30, 1901.^{57 58}

The building’s restroom (just the one?) apparently incorporated the “Smead dry closet“, in which facilities without sewer access could collect feces and burn it into a fine powder — a novel solution in 1890, but quite outdated by 1901, when flush toilets had become the accepted standard.

As the Journal explained:

“In the lavatory the Smead system of disposing of the refuse was used. Daily the crematory in connection with the lavatory was fired up.

The negro porter who started these fires this morning placed a wheelbarrow load of shavings and other timber from the premises into the furnace. The fire burned fiercely and broke through the top of the furnace.

“When Dr. Bryan went into the department he noticed the flames. He ran out and asked if the flames were not too high.

“Superintendent James L. Wilson seeing the condition of the fire quickly gave the alarm. By this time the flames had commenced to burn the woodwork in the vicinity of the furnace.

“The smoke was pouring into the center of the house in great volumes, and owing to the draft at this place the flames spread rapidly.”⁵⁹

Of course, they tried to pin the blame on the Black man, but after sitting unused for ten years, the furnace was probably a faulty mess. Or maybe the place was just haunted by Sherman‘s ghost.

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We Love Them

And Now In Their Declining Years

We Will Shelter Them.

Something About the Home to be Occupied by the Soldiers

Who Shed Their Blood For The Southern Land–A Description of the New Building Soon to be Completed for the Veterans.

The veterans will soon be quartered in their new home.

The plans for the building were prepared by Messrs. Bruce & Morgan.

The contract was awarded to Messrs. Austin & Boylston.

The building will be one hundred and eighty feet long, and at the south end, the widest portion, one hundred feet in width.

The approach will be through a “Porte coache,” [sic] and the entrance will be handsomely finished and attractive. On either side of the main entrance there will be niches for statuary.

On the first floor are a main hall, corridors, reception rooms, a parlor, a chapel, a sitting room, office, dining room, kitchen, pantry, laundry and bed rooms.

You first enter a large hall, handsomely finished, 32×50 feet. On the right are the ladies’ reception room and parlors and on the left the gentlemen’s reception room. Adjoining the latter is a reading room. The sitting room is 25×59 feet, and will be used by the old soldiers when the weather will not permit them to go out of doors.

The office is in the main hall.

The “memorial chapel” is in front of the building, and to the left of the main entrance. It will be used for divine services, banquets and public receptions.

The dining room is 36×40 feet, and will seat one hundred people. The kitchen and pantries are a one-story wing and adjoin the dining hall. The laundry is beneath the kitchen.

There are ten bed rooms on this floor.

Two hundred and seventy-five feet of wide verandahs surround the first floor.

There are thirty rooms on the second floor, the smallest of which are 12×14 feet, and the largest 15×18.

Each bedroom has a fireplace and two windows.

There are several easily accessible staircases leading to the first floor.

On the second floor there are three balconies, one in the center of the building and one on each side.

A portion of one wing of the building is three stories high, and in this upper story are ten bedrooms.

The turret, the highest point of which is one hundred and twenty feet from the ground, is of an octagon shape.

A large balcony surrounds the building seventy-five feet from the ground, and from it an excellent view of the city can be had.

The foundation of the building will be stone and the balance of wood, inside the wood work will be natural pine, and the main hall will be panel-wainscotted.

It will cost between twenty and twenty-five thousand dollars and will be one of the handsomest buildings in the county.⁶⁰

References

1. Illustration credit: “We Love Them”. The Atlanta Journal, April 26, 1890, p. 12. ↩︎
2. “The Veterans’ Home”. The Atlanta Journal, December 9, 1890, p. 1. ↩︎
3. “Veterans’ Home”. The Atlanta Journal, May 9, 1889, p. 4. ↩︎
4. “Ex-Confederate Home.” Austin Weekly Statesman (Austin, Texas), November 1, 1888, p. 4. ↩︎
5. “To Aid Confederate Soldiers.” New-York Tribune, February 7, 1889, p. 3. ↩︎
6. “Echoes From The People.” The World (New York), January 31, 1889, p. 2. ↩︎
7. “The Confederates Home.” The Atlanta Constitution, April 2, 1889, p. 1. ↩︎
8. “Shall We Go Begging For Them?” The Atlanta Constitution, April 6, 1889, p. 4. ↩︎
9. “Let Us Wear Them In Our Hearts!” The Atlanta Constitution, April 7, 1899, p. 17. ↩︎
10. “The Soldiers’ Home.” The Atlanta Constitution, April 26, 1890, p. 15. ↩︎
11. Illustration credit: “The Soldiers’ Home”. The Atlanta Constitution, April 26, 1890, p. 15. ↩︎
12. “The Confederate Home.” The Atlanta Constitution, September 11, 1889, p. 7. ↩︎
13. “The Trustees Meet.” The Atlanta Constitution, July 17, 1891, p. 7. ↩︎
14. “In And About Atlanta.” The Atlanta Constitution, September 21, 1889, p. 5. ↩︎
15. “The Confederate Home.” The Atlanta Constitution, November 24, 1889, p. 11. ↩︎
16. “To Lay The Corner-Stone.” The Atlanta Constitution, April 15, 1890, p. 5. ↩︎
17. “Confederate Home.” The Atlanta Constitution, April 25, 1890, p. 9. ↩︎
18. “The Veterans’ Home”. The Atlanta Constitution, January 9, 1891, p. 6. ↩︎
19. “Strong Effort To Pass Gary Bill”. The Atlanta Constitution, November 25, 1900, p. 4. ↩︎
20. “In And About Atlanta.” The Atlanta Constitution, September 21, 1889, p. 5. ↩︎
21. “The Trustees Meet.” The Atlanta Constitution, July 17, 1891, p. 7. ↩︎
22. ‘The Confederate “Home” Movement.’ The Atlanta Constitution, April 9, 1889, p. 4. ↩︎
23. “It Is Still Moving On!” The Atlanta Constitution, April 16, 1889, p. 4. ↩︎
24. “The Confederate Home of Georgia Organized.” The Atlanta Constitution, April 19, 1889, p. 4. ↩︎
25. “The Trustees Meet.” The Atlanta Constitution, July 17, 1891, p. 7. ↩︎
26. “The Idler’s Note Book”. The Atlanta Journal, September 9, 1890, p. 4. ↩︎
27. “About The Capitol.” The Atlanta Constitution, October 19, 1890, p. 16. ↩︎
28. “Confederate Home.” The Atlanta Constitution, November 22, 1890, p. 10. ↩︎
29. ibid. ↩︎
30. “Defeated!” The Atlanta Constitution, August 27, 1891, p. 1. ↩︎
31. “Defeat The Fate.” The Atlanta Constitution, December 15, 1892, p. 7. ↩︎
32. “The Veterans Mourn.” The Atlanta Journal, December 15, 1892, p. 1. ↩︎
33. “Confederate Soldiers’ Home Is Sold To Joel Hurt For $8,000”. The Atlanta Constitution, May 3, 1899, p. 5. ↩︎
34. “The Greeks Bearing Gifts.” The Atlanta Constitution, September 5, 1891, p. 4. ↩︎
35. “The Soldiers’ Home”. The Atlanta Constitution, November 24, 1892, p. 8. ↩︎
36. “Those Joint Debates.” The Atlanta Journal, March 31, 1894, p. 13. ↩︎
37. “Trustees Will Meet”. The Atlanta Constitution, January 22, 1895, p. 10. ↩︎
38. “To Sell It In The Spring”. The Atlanta Journal, January 29, 1895, p. 1. ↩︎
39. “The Home To Be Sold”. The Atlanta Constitution, January 30, 1895, p. 5. ↩︎
40. Illustration credit: “Soldiers’ Home Opens Its Doors To Veterans Today”. The Atlanta Journal, June 3, 1901, p. 7. ↩︎
41. “The Soldiers’ Home Case.” The Atlanta Constitution, September 4, 1895, p. 5. ↩︎
42. “To Sell The Soldiers’ Home”. The Atlanta Constitution, September 17, 1895, p. 5. ↩︎
43. “The Soldiers’ Home.” The Atlanta Constitution, December 18, 1895, p. 8. ↩︎
44. “Sale of Soldiers’ Home Property.” The Atlanta Constitution, March 31, 1896, p. 10. ↩︎
45. “Home Trustees Have Not Acted”. The Atlanta Constitution, June 3, 1897, p. 12. ↩︎
46. “Soldiers’ Home To Be Sold. Court’s Order Expected Any Time”. The Atlanta Constitution, May 24, 1897, p. 6. ↩︎
47. “Sale Of Home Declared Off”. The Atlanta Constitution, April 6, 1898, p. 5. ↩︎
48. “Confederate Soldiers’ Home Is Sold To Joel Hurt For $8,000”. The Atlanta Constitution, May 3, 1899, p. 5. ↩︎
49. “Soldiers’ Home Sells For $8,000 At Auction”. The Atlanta Journal, May 2, 1899, p. 1. ↩︎
50. “Sale Of The Home Is Not Confirmed”. The Atlanta Constitution, May 22, 1889, p. 8. ↩︎
51. Gary, W.T. “Why We Should Accept Confederate Home.” The Atlanta Constitution, November 13, 1900, p. 4. ↩︎
52. “Veterans Fighting For Soldiers’ Home”. The Atlanta Journal, November 20, 1900, p. 10. ↩︎
53. “Soldiers’ Home Bill Passed By House; Georgia Veterans Will Have Shelter At Last After Waiting Eleven Years”. The Atlanta Journal, December 12, 1900, p. 1. ↩︎
54. “Georgia Veterans Get Their Home By The Vote Of 106 To 50”. The Atlanta Constitution, December 13, 1900, p. 1. ↩︎
55. “Soldiers’ Home Will Be Opened To Vets Today”. The Atlanta Constitution, June 3, 1901, p. 1. ↩︎
56. “Soldiers’ Home Opens Its Doors To Veterans Today”. The Atlanta Journal, June 3, 1901, p. 7. ↩︎
57. “Soldiers’ Home Totally Destroyed: Generous People Will Rebuild It; Journal Leases Hotel For Vets”. The Atlanta Journal, September 30, 1901, p. 1. ↩︎
58. “Soldiers’ Home, Destroyed By Flames That Relit The Fire Of A Smouldering Sympathy, Will Be Rebuilt By Georgians”. The Atlanta Constitution, October 1, 1901, p. 1. ↩︎
59. ibid. ↩︎
60. “We Love Them”. The Atlanta Journal, April 26, 1890, p. 12. ↩︎