Georgian Terrace Hotel

When Gilded Age entrepreneur and investor Joseph Francis Gatins Sr. decided to build a hotel in his hometown of Atlanta, Georgia, he drew inspiration from the lodgings he’d enjoyed on trips to Paris. Gatins commissioned a hotel in the popular Beaux-Arts style, complete with an elegant café terrace, meant to resemble those found in European cities.

The Georgian Terrace opened in 1911 to a crowd of five thousand people arriving for a glimpse of its marble lobby adorned with Italian bronze chandeliers. In the grand ballroom, an orchestra from Spain provided entertainment while bellboys and maids serviced the waves of visitors.

In 1935, book editor Harold Latham was staying at the hotel when an unknown author named Margaret Mitchell Marsh handed him a copy of her manuscript, Gone with the Wind, in the lobby. The stack of pages was so substantial Latham had to buy an extra suitcase to transport it back to his offices in New York.

Over the next four decades, the Georgian Terrace became a residential hotel, an unfortunately unsuccessful music venue, and ultimately was converted into luxury apartments in the eighties. Finally, thanks to a great many Georgian devotees who, frankly, gave a damn, right before the turn of the century the hotel was fully restored to its original use.