Description
L.P. Grant Mansion - Atlanta
The L.P. Grant Mansion is located on St. Paul Avenue in Atlanta, Georgia. The Italianate mansion was built in 1856 for railroad engineer and businessman Lemuel Pratt Grant. It stood three stories tall and sat on 600 acres of land at the time of its construction. Grant, born in Maine, first came to Atlanta in 1840 and in the ensuing years helped to create the city’s railroad empire. He eventually became president of the Atlanta and West Point Railway in 1881 and the Western Railroad of Alabama in 1883. He joined the Confederate Army in 1862 and his skill as an engineer came into play when he designed the defensive fortifications around Atlanta. The mansion was in use as a Confederate hospital in 1864 when General Sherman’s Union troops marched through Atlanta, but was spared the torch when Masonic paraphernalia was found in the house. Orders were issued to pass by Mason’s homes. In 1882 Grant donated land to the city for what is now Grant Park. After Grant’s wife died in 1879 he remarried and moved to a new house in 1881. The Grant Mansion remained in the family for years after Grant’s death in 1893. In 1902 Grant’s grandson, Bryan, and his wife, was living in the house with their guests, Robert P. Jones and his wife. On March 17 of that year Mrs. Jones gave birth in the house to a son, Robert Tyre Jones Jr., later known as Bobby Jones, who became one of the most important figures in the history of golf. In 1941 the mansion came under the eye of Margaret Mitchell, who was involved in purchasing the mansion with hopes of turning it into a museum. Unfortunately the house fell into disrepair over the years and a subsequent fire destroyed the top floors and the porch. In 2001 the Grant Mansion was spared demolition when it was purchased by the Atlanta Preservation Society, who has been involved in an ongoing restoration of the house. Today the mansion is one of only three antebellum houses in Atlanta still sitting on its original site.
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