Photograph by Jeff Herr
Perhaps it wasn’t fair to ask architect William H. Harrison to pick his favorite house. After all, Harrison Design recently published a glossy coffee table book with more than 400 spectacular images to mark the firm’s 25th anniversary. But this house completed in 2001 is, at least, his sentimental favorite. “I have known the lady of the house since childhood and had remodeled their smaller home in Garden Hills,” says Harrison, of Ed and Suzanne Godfrey’s northwest Atlanta residence. “We had casually been discussing plans for the future. This property came up for sale, but they were out of town.” Harrison placed a bid, confident it was the perfect spot for their dream house—or maybe even his own. However, when the Godfreys returned, they discovered the same almost-seven-acre tract and made a higher offer, not realizing they had essentially bid against themselves—until they called Harrison to report their find. The architect and his clients proved equally like-minded over what to build. “They described how they liked to live and the feeling they wanted—a romantic, European stone house—and the rest was left up to me,” says Harrison. “They liked it exactly as it was designed, saying, ‘You created a wonderful place for us to do our life.’”
This article originally appeared in our Spring 2017 issue of Atlanta Magazine’s HOME.
