TUSQUITEE:
THE HOME OF ANNE MORGAN MOORE
JEFFERSONIAN CLASSICAL REVIVAL
3340 Chatham Road, NW
Atlanta, Georgia 30305-1140
(revised October 9, 2002)
OVERVIEW
Tusquitee, the home of Anne Morgan Moore, was designed in 1952 by the noted Atlanta architect Lewis “Buck” Crook of the firm of Ivey and Crook. He was a protégé of and chief draftsman for Neel Reid and an associate of Phillip Shutze and James Means, all of the Georgia School of Classicists. The home is in the Southern Classical Revival style which emphasizes the Greek Classical Revival with the Southern regionalism inspired by Thomas Jefferson . Therefore, it is often referred to as Jeffersonian Classical Revival.
PURPOSE
ARCHITECTURE
Tusquitee wascompleted in 1952 in the Buckhead section of Atlanta. It is in the form of a Greek revival temple house with a portico or projecting central pavilion, which Crook says in his Forward to Architecture of the Old South, 1926, “had no counterpart in Europe. The direct classicism of the revivalist in the temple form of architecture first gained a foothold in the South and produced our own great national style in architecture – America’s independent contribution to the art.” The one and one half story or raised basement reflects “an interesting variety of the old houses in the lowlands of the South in which the principal floor is elevated several feet from the ground.”
The house was designed for Kiser and Emily Stephenson when they were in their mid-fifties. Even though they had no children, they wanted a spacious home that lent itself to entertaining. Kiser Stephenson owned a commercial air-conditioning, heating, and plumbing contracting business, so the infrastructure of the house is all commercial grade. The Stephensons named the house “Tusquitee” after the Indian name of her great-grandfather’s former pre-civil war summer mountain home in North Carolina. (see endnote)
The Atlanta home was built on a two-acre hill, but the front yard was graded flat. Consequently, the house appears to be one story, but a lower level is hidden by the grading. Light comes into the lower level rooms through “window wells” which are located behind the shrubbery in front of the long basement windows. The flat front yard conceals this lower level which houses the casual entertaining area.
The back of the house, which also is in the temple style, has a brick patio, pierced brick walls, and stone retaining walls. In 1953, approximately 120 magnolia trees were planted along the property line to provide a privacy screen and a back- drop for the house.
The motif of the Greek fret or Greek key of interlocking square-shaped hook forms is a Crook trademark. It is repeated in five different mediums on (1) the limestone lintels over the front windows, (2) the iron work on the front porch, (3) the wooden front door,(4) the plaster crown molding on the fireplace wall , and (5) the wooden fireplace surround.
The façade of the house has a central pedimented portico or porch supported by four Ionic columns. The Ionic column is an elegant Greek column, with a capital which has volutes that look like upside-down scrolls. The Greek temple front has a pediment or wide, low pitched gable of the roof with cornice molding enclosing the three sides of the triangle . The interior of the triangle is stucco. The brickwork is Flemish bond, a refined pattern consisting of bricks laid alternately with the stretchers lengthwise exposing the long side and the headers endwise exposing the short side. This pattern was often found in the finest brick buildings during the 18th and early 19th centuries. The front porch is laid in hard clay brick in the basket weave pattern. The face brick is Colonial Sand Finish and 36,500 were laid.
The slender curved graceful wrought-iron handrails and the porch railings, which were made by Golian Steel and Iron Co., contain the Greek key motif as well as the rosette pattern repeated inside on the mantel and the foyer stair railings. The front of the house has eight triple-hung windows inspired by Jefferson’s Monticello.
Standard Buff Indiana Oolithic limestone was used for the three front steps leading up to the porch, the copings on the borders of the porch, and the eight limestone paneled lintels and window sills. All of the other windows have brick jack arches.
The federal style front doorway has an arched fanlight window along with slender sidelight windows. The leaded glass work, ornaments, and wide lead cams (?), came from Llorens Stained Glass Studios. The front door is similar to Crook’s design for his own home in 1938 and was inspired by the Arlington House in Natchez, MS. The unusual screen door is louvered and was given to the Stephensons by a personal friend who was also a contractor.
INTERIOR
The Stephensons loved the feeling of bringing the out-of-doors inside. As you enter the house, you ascend another set of steps with brass railings decorated with rosettes . This brings you into a wide foyer from which you may look through the living room and garden room to see the focal point—the cascading, triple-shell, fountain with a pierced brick wall as a backdrop in the brick garden patio. The entrance hall reflects a formal, symmetrical but open plan for a contemporary house, in which the outside becomes part of the interior. Double paneled doors open into the living room from the foyer and then from the living room into the garden room. The foyer, living room, and dining room, all have heavy dentil molding and the double doors all have pediment heads.
The fireplace wall in the living room features niches on either side of the center fireplace with paneling treatment made by wooden molding applied over plaster dividing the wall. The fireplace wall also has plaster Greek key molding under the wooden dentil crown molding. The mantel, with exquisite ornamental facing, is supported by Ionic column pilasters. A pilaster is a shallow rectangular column over a base, attached to a wall as an ornamental motif. Also, the Greek key motif and rosettes are repeated in the fireplace surround. The mantel shelf or mantel-piece is curved in the manner of much older mantels. The fireplace is of Verde Antique Italian marble. Opposite this wall are double doors leading into the dining room. The doors are six panel/cross and open bible.
Both the living room and the dining room have chair rails. In addition, the dining room has wainscoting, a facing or paneling of wood over plaster applied to the walls of a room or the lower part of an interior wall when finished in a material different from that of the upper part. The ceiling medallion for the chandelier is composed of plaster acanthus leaves. The dining room also brings the outside in with a bay window looking out to the rose garden. On the main level are three large bedrooms each with their own bath.
The garden room is walled almost entirely in Twindow, a type of early thermopane glass to give a view of the outside gardens. In 1997-98, the ceiling, walls, and floor were custom designed and painted to resemble a gazebo and continue the design of the gardens. The ceiling and walls were painted by James Chadwick and the rug was painted by Katherine Arnett. The exterior back of the house is also in the temple style. The garden room not only has double doors into the living room, the two windows flanking the doors are triple-hung and open from floor to ceiling so that one can pass through them and so that air could circulate
The pine-paneled party room downstairs with pilasters and ceiling cross beams opens out onto a terrace of Cherokee stone. The fireplace is of Virginia Green Tremolite (???) with a Columbia mantel. It is reached from the inside by passing through an octagonal pine-paneled serving room or entrance foyer that has a pass-through bar into the downstairs kitchen. This unusual 8-sided room, reflecting the Adam style, has a tray ceiling feature and doors and cabinets paneled with arches and keystones.
The other rooms on this lower level include a guest powder room, a servant’s room now an office, a full bath, a cutting room for flowers, a boiler room (each room is controlled by a separate thermostat), a storage room, a tool room, a laundry room and a double garage.
LEWIS EDMUND “BUCK” CROOK
Lewis Crook caught the eye of Neel Reid, the HRA firm’s principal designer, and thus became Reid’s protégé and favorite draftsman. Crook’s specialty like his mentor, Neel Reid, was “traditional” design, the sophisticated eclecticism of the early 20th century in which the historical styles were knowledgeably and creatively adapted in the service of contemporary architecture. Crook accompanied Reid to England, France, and Italy on a sketching tour from April to July 1922. HRA had the Andrew Calhoun House on the drawing boards and their trip included gathering ideas and furnishings for this and other houses. They visited Italian villas, gathering inspiration for the design. Reid also purchased Italian antiques for the Calhouns to use later as furnishings. Shutze had given suggestions for places to visit in Italy, specific villas that would beused in the design. The final design of the house seems to be the result of a collaboration of Reid, Crook, and Shutze, with the important element of construction put into the hands of the newly formed firm of Ivey & Crook. This tour to Europe with Neel Reid was a high point of Buck Crook’s youth, education, and apprenticeship. Four years after this trip, Neel Reid died of a brain tumor at age 41, a tragic loss to architecture and his friends. Buck Crook grieved over Reid’s early death for many years, becoming unusually quiet, even tearful, at its mention.
Long before the Bauhaus replaced the Beaux-Arts at GA Tech, Crook met an architect eight years his senior who had a life-long influence on his thinking, Philip Trammell Shutze of the Class of 1913. Neither man gave up traditionalism, nor practiced “orange-crate architecture.” During Buck’s freshman year, Professor Francis Smith announced that one of their own, Phil Shutze had won the Rome Prize, describing it as “the most sought after prize open to students of architecture.” This three-year fellowship for European study based at the American Academy in Rome, Italy had been established by architects of the calibre of the great classicist, Charles F. McKim. Shutze had gone from Tech to Columbia University’s master’s program in architecture, and Buck first knew him when he returned from time to time to lecture or serve as a critic at Tech. The announcement of this award during Buck’s freshman year confirmed his choice of Tech as the right place to study architecture. The talents and accomplishments of his colleague became a life-long point of pride and inspiration, especially since they had close associations for many years beginning after Buck was graduated and they both worked for HRA, the firm to which Shutze’s name was added in 1927. In addition, they both had offices in downtown Atlanta in the Candler Building. Phil Shutze in a 1953 letter described Crook as a fellow of uncomman attainment. “I have observed Mr. Crook, a friend of long standing, realize a fine career over the years since his sound academic training at Georgia Tech, his subsequent apprenticeship in the best possible traditions, and the right sort of influences in his early formative years, then finally his own practice for a long period under the firm name Ivey and Crook. Perhaps he has found his most sympathetic field in his house and church design, however, he has proven himself versatile enough to include among his work schools and all types of commercial buildings. Always in his approach to a problem he has chosen a straight forward solution, never extreme, not too far to the right or left, and has managed always to come up with a rational, reasonable, and convincing design.” Shutze believed that a good building constituted the attributes of durability, convenience, and beauty.
After his European trip with Neel Reid, Crook joined Ernest Daniel Ivey, another alumnus of Ga Tech and of the Hentz, Reid, & Adler firm in forming Ivey & Crook in May 1923. Buck Crook was the designer and Ed Ivey was the supervisor of construction. Ivey was considered a specialist in all phases of construction. Buck had an inborn sense of beauty and a natural gift for design. The complimentary strengths in construction and design of the two partners in effect created one architect. Together, they designed and built some of the most beautiful public buildings and homes in Atlanta for nearly half a century, including some 40 buildings for Emory University – the red tiled-roofed, Renaissance classical marble halls and Lullwater, the current home of the president of Emory. Crook was an SAE and designed the SAE houses at Emory, University of Georgia, and the University of Alabama (where SAE was founded in 1856).
Ivey and Crook built many residences in neighborhoods planned along the lines of garden suburbs – with curving streets that enhance and follow the natural contours of the hilly terrain with houses built on fairly large, well-landscaped lots. The Ivey & Crook’s service included a topographical survey to help in placing the house in the context of the terrain and neighborhood. Crook designed 34 residences in the northwest area of Atlanta where Tusquitee is located.
Crook designed his own church and home in the American Classical style, but neither is a duplicate of any particular classical prototype. Crook used the style in his own manner, and his designs were original creations. . Adapting historical architecture for modern living became Crook’s hallmark.
Crook’s own house at 172 Peachtree Battle Avenue, built in 1938 was the prototype for the contemporary 20th century classical adaption and interpretation of 19th century Federal and Greek Revival cottages. The Southern Classical Revival cottage reflected the single-story pavilion types that Jefferson had favored and that Crook embraced. The Period House was a widespread phenomenon, but many architects, sought to develop, or perhaps adapt, a style with a specifically American flavor. Crook sought a distinctly Southern style. Mr. Crook was one of the few designers in this area who successfully preserved the spirit, charm, and refinement of historical Southern architecture
# 541 Julian M. Harrison Residence (1950) - 670 West Paces Ferry Road (current owner is Betty [Mrs. McKee] Nunnally)
# 555 Marcus M. Emmert Residence (1951) - 2915 Andrews Drive (current owner is Mrs. Neale M. Bearden)
# 563 Fred W. Patterson residence (1951) - 2959 Andrews Drive (current owner is David J. Tufts)
# 574 Frank C. Owens Residence (1953) - 350 Blackland Road (current owner unknown)
# 669 Mrs. J.H. Starr Residence (1961) - 3330 West Andrews Drive (current owners are Carolyn Mellon
After World War II, a national trend towards International Modernism seized the day . Crook often called this “orange-crate architecture”. Despite the eclipse of early 20th century traditionalism, Crook continued to produce this architecture into the 1960’s. Crook expressed this conservative architectural impulse quite simply:
“To create a house of distinction and individuality requires a sense of proportion, a sense of fitness to its surroundings, and a regard for precedent.” Crook once told L.V. Benfield, a valued draftsman with Crook who drafted many of the drawings for this house. “There are cycles in architecture but people always come back to the classics.”
Merrill W. Newbanks was the contractor. O’Neill Mfg. of Rome, Georgia supplied the millwork including the outdoor blinds, the door pediment heads, living room mantel, and crown molding. The interior blinds were done like the Goddard house by J.P. Womack & Sons. The house was photographed in 1954 by Gabriel Benzur, who was an architectual photographer. In 1987and 1993, Anne Moore updated the kitchen and pantry to create a sitting area and updated and reconfigured the Master Bathroom and closet. Norman Askins, an outstanding Atlanta architect designed these to complement the house and in keeping with the Crook tradition.
The grounds of Tusquitee were extensively landscaped in the early 1950’s by Billy Monroe, Sr., a preeminent landscape architect. The gardens were designed to be an integral part of the architectural scheme in which the outside becomes part of the interior of the house. The original garden hardscape includes a dry rock wall and a formal courtyard patio with a curved, pierced brick wall softened by creeping fig and sasanqua camellias. The courtyard patio is of St. Joe brick, which is made in Louisiana of Mississippi mud. The rock retaining wall containing ferns, mosses and other plantings is topped by a 45-foot expanse of blue hydrangeas including Lacecaps. The brick courtyard contains formal boxwoods, Annabelle hydrangeas, ferns, ginger lilies, and two unusual double blossom dogwood trees.
The original plantings include boxwoods, regular as well as satsuki azaleas, camellias, Southern yew, hydrangeas, a Chinese dogwood, Japanese maple, and Yoshino and Kwansan cherry trees. Many other plants and 120 magnolia trees survive from the 1950’s. Billy Monroe, Jr., also a landscape architect, did re-landscaping in the 1970’s. His work was distinguished by its elegance and the manner in which it complemented the home. Brooks Garcia, owner of Fine Gardens and a noted landscape architect, has updated and refined the grounds. The formal brick patio garden has been transformed into a shade garden and pond surrounding a fountain with cascading water into three tiered shells. The garden and grounds are currently maintained by Dale Hall who is the owner of Grasshopper Services.
The rose gardens at Tusquitee have been totally revamped since 1995. Brooks Garcia, owner of Fine Gardens and a noted landscape architect, designed the current formal rose garden and other rose areas. Since 1997 Evelyn and Arthur Rose, well-known rosarians, and their son Michael have maintained the rose garden. The roses are now maintained by Grasshopper Services There are over 120 bushes including 62 varieties and seven classes: hybrid teas(66), grandifloras(11), floribundas(11), David Austin shrubs(8), polyanthas(2), hybrid musks(11), and old garden roses(10).
The formal rose garden has a central brick walk, an entrance arbor, and is framed with boxwoods and a fence designed by Brooks Garcia and constructed by Rob Apsley. The former roses, primarily Queen Elizabeth roses from 1955, were replaced with new bushes to provide an extended palette of color, more varieties and classes, and better production. Ms. Moore selected the roses based on ARS ratings, exhibition rankings, their performance in Atlanta, peach and yellow color palette, and a broad range of classes and varieties. The grounds also contain a 30-foot expanse of Cornelia roses cascading over a seven- foot brick retaining wall in the driveway courtyard.
The interior of Tusquitee was recently and extensively decorated by Lynn Starling, an ASID interior designer. The home showcases many antiques and family heirlooms. (To be written later)
Also of interest to gardeners is the collection of glass sculptures of roses and other flowers by Hans Godo Frabel of Atlanta.
The Georgian style was developed in England by Inigo Jones, Christopher Wren, and James Gibbs. It was based on the Italian Renaissance vision of order, balance, and dignity which derived from Roman models. The early Georgian house features a symmetrical box-like façade (five, four, and a door). Palladian Georgian or late Georgian (1750-1776) houses are symmetrical brick buildings with a central projecting pavilion which extends out from the wall surface. In general, Palladian Georgian houses are more formal and ornamental than the early Georgian style. Georgian architects in England were greatly influenced by the buildings of the Italian Renaissance, especially by the work of Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio (1508-1580). A common feature of Palladio’s designs adopted by this Georgian style was the central projecting pavilion. Other important features of Georgian houses are keystone lintels, elaborate entrances, and dentil molding. The Federal or Adam house has many similar features, but it is lighter in appearance and less formal.
By 1776 a new style created in Scotland by the Adams brothers had contended with and overcome Georgian Palladianism in popularity. The Adamesque style was essentially a creative amalgam of Renaissance and Palladian forms, the delicacy of the French rococo and the classical architecture of Greece and Rome. Robert Adam and his volumes of architectual drawings were based on archeological explorations and travel accounts . They proved that Roman architecture was richer and more varied – variety of room shapes and colorful interiors - than Renaissance and neo-Palladian architects had acknowledged. Delicate decorative patterns of urns, swags, and garlands were found on many private homes in Pompeii and Herculaneum.
American builders learned about the Adam style from English and American pattern books. It is significant that one of the first manifestations of the Adamesque style in America is an interior feature, for it was in their decorative interiors that the Adam brothers excelled and differed most pronouncedly from Palladian architectural design. The Adamesque style as found in the US is known as the Federal style because it flowered in the early decades of the new nation and was favored by its leaders.
Lighter in feeling and more refined than the earlier Georgian colonial houses, window panes were larger, but their dividers or glazing bars were more slender. Roofs were usually lower. Door and window openings were beautifully scaled and articulated, frequently incorporating semi-circular fan and elliptical oval forms. Columns and moldings were narrow, chaste, and delicate compared to the robust features of the earlier Georgian style. In general, exterior decoration was confined to a porch or entrance motif. Rooms were often oval or octagonal. Mantels and cornices were decorated with delicate rosettes, urns, swags, and paterae
The hallmark of the Federal style is the fanlight, which arches delicately over the door like a spider’s web. The rounded arch of ancient Roman architecture was transformed into the fanlight of the Federal style. This semicircular window located above the door takes it name from the shape of a fully opened woman’s hand fan. The fanlight functions to let light into the entrance hall while maintaining privacy.
Jefferson favored the classical style not only for aesthetic, but also for political and moral reasons. He believed public as well as domestic architecture in the young American republic should look back to that of democratic Athens and republican Rome, to inspire the people and provide them with models of good taste, simplicity, and virtue. Yet Jefferson, a self-taught architect, did not merely copy classical models; he incorporated his own ideas and modern influences to achieve a distinctly American neoclassical style.
During the five years Jefferson lived in Paris as Minister to France, he found many things to admire about French architecture, including its treatment of light. Through the use of large windows, high ceilings, white or light-colored wall surfaces, gildings, and mirrors, French interiors were considerably more light than those in America. Jefferson was inspired to employ several of these devices at Monticello when he enlarged and remodeled the house after his return from France.
Jefferson’s residential designs were derived from public structures and not from the houses and villas of Roman nobility. Consequently, they have heavy modillions or ornamental brackets under the extended roof, full-scale cornices and a more masculine feeling than Federal-style mansions. For Thomas Jefferson, the Roman orders were the first principles of architecture and symbolized the republican form of government he believed was being revived in the New World. Many of Jefferson’s red brick houses could be termed Roman Revival, but with the influence of Southern regionalism, it is perhaps more fitting to call them Jeffersonian. The red brick walls, louvred shutters, and triple-hung windows are pure Virginian. Houses influenced by Jefferson were often one story on a raised basement with a symmetrical façade and a small classical portico or projecting central pavilion.
In the 1770’s during the Adam period, Josiah Wedgwood, the celebrated English potter, perfected a classically inspired ceramic called jasperware in the 1770’s. Featuring white bas-relief antique-style figures fused to an unglazed colored stoneware body (typically light blue). Jasperware became extremely popular in Europe and America. Jefferson admired Wedgewood’s classically inspired antique motifs on the jasperware ceramics and owned a variety of pieces. Inset jasperware plaques ornamented the Dining Room mantelpiece at Monticello and the elegant mirror hanging over the mantel.
Greek ornamental motifs include heavy classical decorative details: acanthus leaves- a very popular leaf design; Greek key – a decorative border made up of interlocking square-shaped hook forms; dentil molding – a decorative border made up of small rectangular blocks, regularly spaced and connected by a line at the base of each block; and volute- a classical scroll-shape which curls inward and often seen as the capital (top) of the Greek Ionic column .
1. William R. Mitchell, Jr., “A Traditional House for Modern Life,”Southern Homes, July/August 1989 .
2. William Robert Mitchell, Jr., Lewis Edmund Crook, Jr., Architect (1898-1967): A Twentieth- Century Traditionalist in the Deep South. (The History Business, Atlanta, Georgia,1984) Note : Heavily copied for this paper
3. Marilyn W. Klein and David B. Etienne, Clues to American Architecture (Starhill Press,Washington,D.C. and Philadelphia,1986) pp 14-19.
4. John C. Poppeliers, S. Allen Chambers, Jr., Nancy B. Schwartz, What Style is it? – Historic American Buildings Survey –National Trust for Historic Preservation (The Preservation Press, Washington, D.C., 1983) p.18, pp 30-39.
5. Maurie Van Buren, House Styles at a Glance (Longstreet Press, Atlanta, Georgia, 1991) pp 2-11.
Lois Crook Crossley, Buck Crook’s daughter – letters
Letter written by Philip Trammell Shutze on December 3, 1952 to the Jury of Fellows – American Institute of Architects.
( lads.com/buckcrook/homes/job569c.jpg) – This web site was developed and is maintained by Jim Crossley the eldest grandson of Buck Crook – 215 Elaine Drive, Roswell, Ga. 30075 – hm 770-518-4721; wk: 770 594-252- jim @lads.com
Italianate or Palladian Influences on Philip Shutze and the Swan House – paper by Whitney Boteler, a Swan House intern.
Ivey and Crook - Detailed house specifications - 50+ pages.
Merrill
W. Newbanks, Contractor - Detailed invoices and records
The Tusquitee community is north of Hayesville not far from Andrews and Murphy, NC. The home was at the bottom of the mountain on a creek or the Tusquitee River and the cemetery was at the top. William Tidwell’s daughter married Asa Deadwyler. The father of Evelyn Woods or Mrs.Robert Heaton (PO Box 1220, Andrews , NC 28901) sold it to the parents of Jane Withers. It was then torn down. Tusquitee is a Cherokee word with several interpretations. The most acknowledged means “place where the waterdogs laughed.” This is derived from a Cherokee legend about the Tusquitee area. The other means “place of rafters” as in the supports for a council lodge which reflects how the mountains come down to the valley. This area was first settled by white pioneers in the early 1800’s. There is a small community of Tusquitee. There is a land development company there called Tusquittee Land Co. ( with 2 t’s?)