Atlanta, GA 30309-3964
(404) 249-7012
Open daily from 9:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.
Admission: adults, $6.00; senior citizens and students, $5.00; children 12 and under, $4.00
This Tudor/Revival building was built in 1899. It was home first to Cornelius J. Sheehan, the owner of Greer's Almanac.
The house has experienced several renovations. In 1913, Atlanta experienced a business boom which would have taken the house in as commercial property. However, the owners took dramatic steps to keep their house. They moved it several feet back on the lot and turned what was then the back of the house into the front.
In 1919, the house was converted into a three-story apartment building, and in 1925, it became the honeymoon home of John R. Marsh and Margaret Mitchell. Theirs was a one-bedroom, ground-floor apartment, so tiny and dark that Mitchell nicknamed it "the Dump."
Only a few months after her marriage, Mitchell was restricted to the apartment while recuperating from arthritis. Mitchell occupied her time by writing and began the novel Gone with the Wind in 1926.
John and Margaret lived in this apartment for seven years. In 1932, they moved to another apartment a few blocks north on Peachtree Street in Atlanta.
Over the years the house was neglected, and in 1977 it was boarded up. It has since suffered two fires, but has been renovated to appear as it did when Mitchell and her husband lived there. The home is open for public tours and available for weddings, meetings, and other special events when booked in advance.
A museum shop is open during regular tour hours.
Margaret Mitchell (1900-1945)
Born on November 8, 1900, in Atlanta, Georgia, Margaret Munnerlyn Mitchell was influenced by her mother, a prominent figure in the suffrage movement in Georgia. Mitchell held great pride in her family background, her father being, for a short time, president of the Atlanta Historical Society. As a child Mitchell enjoyed reading and listening to tales of the Civil War and Reconstruction. She wrote short stories and plays and kept a notebook of story ideas.
When Mitchell was a freshman at Smith College, her mother died. Her formal education came to an abrupt halt as she returned home to care for her father and brother. Four years later, in 1922, she married Berrien K. Upshaw, a marriage that lasted only a few months.
In 1923, Mitchell became a reporter for the Atlanta Journal. During this time, she wrote a novelette, Ropa Carmagin, featuring a Southern white girl in love with a mulatto man. This manuscript, along with two children's stories ("The Big Four" and "Little Sister") are now lost.
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