In a news release, the Buckhead Heritage Society Monday announced the May Patterson Goodrum House, located on West Paces Ferry Road in Buckhead, was listed in the National Register of Historic Places May 1. The nomination was sponsored by the property owner, the Thomson-based Watson-Brown Foundation, which also prepared the nomination materials.
The foundation is also refurbishing the home.
In 1929, May Patterson Goodrum, recently widowed from Atlanta businessman James J. Goodrum, hired architect Philip Trammell Shutze to design a house on 5 acres fronting West Paces Ferry Road. The house and landscaped grounds were completed in 1932. May Goodrum lived in the house until 1958, when she and her second husband, architect Francis Abreu, sold the property and moved to Sea Island.
The house was listed at the state level of significance as an excellent example of English Regency-style architecture by Shutze, among the most important 20th-century architects in Georgia. In Atlanta, Shutze designed houses inspired by Italian Renaissance villas for the city’s wealthy elites. Buckhead’s Swan House, which he designed for the Inman family, features cascading fountains based on the Villa Corsini in Rome.
The Goodrum House is also significant because of the Oriental Revival-style murals painted by Athos Menaboni and Allyn Cox. Those themes were popular during the Regency period as exemplified by the Royal Pavilion at Brighton, England.
The house was purchased for $3.5 million by the foundation in 2009 from the Southern Center for International Studies, which used it as its office for more than 20 years.
Information: visit www.dnr.state.ga.us.