When architect Linda MacArthur was a high school student in Chamblee, she took art lessons at the High Museum of Art, where the class was regularly dropped in nearby Ansley Park for sketching sessions. She became captivated by the diversity of architectural style in the historic Midtown neighborhood, from Colonial to Victorian to Italian Renaissance. “Being from a neighborhood where all of the houses were built in the same style at the same time, it was amazing,” she says. “It taught me a lot about how delightful architecture can be.”
Of the many houses that have influenced her, a circa-1921 Neel Reid home on Peachtree Circle stands out.
“I love the scale of this house,” she says. “It’s not a big house, but it has the heart of a grand, elegant house. It’s a great study in proportion.”
MacArthur points to an implied symmetry at first glance, and then a duality that appears in the two pavilions, with one serving as a gracious entry porch. The house, she notes, is somehow both casual and formal, small but stately. “I still spend a lot of time in Ansley looking for inspiration,” says MacArthur. “And now, I do a lot of my own work there, too.”
This article appears in our Fall 2019 issue of Atlanta Magazine’s HOME.