DEL.ICIO.USArt school unveils restored Ivy Hall
Savannah College of Art and Design spent 18 months on restoration of building that once housed The Mansion Restaurant
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thursday, October 02, 2008
The mansion is back. No, not the famed Mansion restaurant that entertained legions of Atlantans for nearly three decades. But the building that housed it, a Victorian mansion known as Ivy Hall, opens Friday after an 18-month restoration. It will serve as a cultural and learning center for Savannah College of Art and Design, which acquired the building in 2007.
More than a dozen students and graduates from SCAD’s Atlanta branch teamed with architects, restoration experts, and art and history enthusiasts to return the once-dilapidated mansion to its ornate Victorian glory.
Keith Hadley/File
Ivy Hall, also known as the Peters House, is shown in this 2006 photo prior to the restoration. It once housed The Mansion Restaurant.
Keith Hadley/File
Savannah College of Art and Design professor Bob Dickensheets, who helped oversee the project, is shown in 2006 giving a tour of the house. Here, he shows the upstairs porch.
“It’s just wonderful to work on a project where everything comes together to create something that will benefit the community in such a meaningful way,” said SCAD professor Bob Dickensheets, who helped oversee the project.
Thursday afternoon, Dickensheets proudly looked on as landscapers installed rhododendron shrubs on Ivy Hall’s wooded lawn overlooking Ponce de Leon and Piedmont avenues. Inside the two-story mansion, painters put the finishing touches on some of the home’s hand-crafted mantels that adorn eight fireplaces.
Designed by celebrated architect Gottfried L. Norrman, the home was built in 1883 for Richard Peters, an industrialist credited with building Atlanta’s first bank and who later donated 200 acres that is now the campus of Georgia Tech. The family owned it until the early 1970s, when investors bought it and turned it into the Mansion restaurant.
The facility held hundreds of wedding receptions and other events for the better part of three decades before fire damaged the upstairs in 2000. The restaurant closed and sat boarded up for years.
Finally, its owner, William Swearingen of S.D.H. Investment Corp., agreed to donate it to the art college. Swearingen also sold two adjacent acres that are being developed into luxury condominiums.
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