OK, let’s round out 2022 with a question for you: when is a lighthouse not a lighthouse, as in this edition’s Mystery Photo. This one comes from a reader, and poses this question. Send your thoughts to elliott@brack.net, including your hometown.
Sara Rawlins of Lawrenceville recognized the recent Mystery Photo: “Aha, a place I actually visited. It’s the back side of the Swan Coach House in Atlanta. In fact, you go through the Swan Coach House gift shop to get to the restaurant and out through some patio doors to the garden outside.
“As impressive as the front of the Swan House itself is, this area behind the house is quiet and peaceful. This garden area makes for a lovely backdrop for weddings and has been used numerous times for lucky couples who want to have their weddings there. The Swan Coach House restaurant has some unique menu items. For instance their signature frozen fruit salad is to die for as well as their cheese straws and chicken salad in pastry shells. (I went there with a group of ladies before the pandemic and I hope to return sometime in the near future with my husband.) The Swan House is part of the Atlanta History Center, which could make it a full day’s activities to visit. PS: There are decadent desserts, but none compare with the frozen fruit salad.”
Others getting this mystery correct include George Graf, Palmyra, Va.; Stew Ogilvie, Lawrenceville; Lou Camerio, Lilburn; Dee Spivey, Fitzgerald; and Susan McBrayer, Sugar Hill;
Allan Peel, San Antonio, Tex., gives us some context of the building: “Designed by Philip Trammel Shutze in 1928 for Edward H. Inman (1881-1931) and his wife, Emily (1881-1965), the Swan House and Gardens is one of Atlanta’s best-known and photographed sites. Edward Inman was an Atlanta businessman with interests in real estate, transportation, and banking and was the heir to a large cotton brokerage fortune amassed after the Civil War. He and his wife moved into the Swan House in 1928, just three years before Edward’s sudden death at age 49. Emily Inman lived in the Swan House until her passing in 1965, after which the Atlanta Historical Society purchased the home and most of its furnishing in 1966, then opening it up to the public in 1967.”
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