Callanwolde launches tours of a ‘working mansion’

Events

Callanwolde Fine Arts Center

• Tours: 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Mondays through Fridays (last ticket is sold at 3:30). Tickets: $12; $10 ages 65 and up, students, and groups of 10 or more; $8 ages 4-12.

Decking Callanwolde's halls It takes a small army to deck the halls of Callanwolde Fine Arts Center for Christmas at Callanwolde. At 27,000 square feet, the two-story 1920 mansion built in the Gothic-Tudor Revival style for the family of Coca-Cola heir Charles Howard Candler boasts a lot of halls, so to speak. Fourteen design groups provided their talents pro-bono to make the manse, normally unfurnished for maximum arts center programming flexibility, glamorously festive for the holidays. It's a picturesque backdrop for a long list of special events, including Breakfasts With Santa, Teddy Bear Teas and Musical Winter Nights concerts. Christmas at Callanwolde continues through Dec. 17. 10 a.m.-4 p.m. weekdays and Saturdays, 11 a.m.–6 p.m. Sundays. Tickets: $20; $15 seniors; $12 children.

980 Briarcliff Road, Atlanta. 404-872-5338, www.callanwolde.org.

The idea behind the recently launched tours of Callanwolde, the 1920 mansion-turned-arts center, was sparked in part by a new employee's visit to, of all places, the World of Coca-Cola.

There would seem little connection between the bubbly downtown tourist attraction and the stately mansion on the border of Virginia-Highland and Druid Hills. But many longtime Atlantans know that there is a Candler family link between the shrine to Atlanta’s favorite carbonated export and the Gothic-Tudor Revival-style manse.

In May, shortly after starting work as Callanwolde Fine Arts Center’s publicity and marketing director, Amy McNett did what many newly arrived Atlantans do — make a World of Coca-Cola pilgrimage. When the narrative there detailed the Candler family’s extensive contributions to Atlanta, the Los Angeles transplant had a thought.

“I came back to Callanwolde and said there’s so much more history here than what we’re making of it,” McNett said.

New arts center executive director Peggy Johnson encouraged McNett and development director Christina Bray to develop a tour of the 1920 "working mansion" built for the family of Charles Howard Candler, eldest son of Coca-Cola founder Asa Candler.

While interviewing for the director’s role, Johnson had wondered why the historic home had not been made more accessible.

Now she is in a position to make the busy arts center — which offers visual and performing arts classes and presents concerts, literary events and art exhibitions — even busier. She figures today’s tour guests could become tomorrow’s students or even donors.

The 17-stop self-guided tour launched in early November, featurs text panels throughout the 27,000-square-feet manse with an additional eight stops on the grounds of the 12-acre estate. Docent-led tours can be arranged for groups of 10 or more.

Unlike a lot of fabulous homes of a certain age, Callanwolde is not decorated to evoke the period when its original owners occupied it, in this case 1920 to 1959. In fact, in keeping with its role as an arts center that also hosts weddings and private parties as well as myriad community events, it is kept relatively unfurnished for maximum flexibility.

The exception is Christmas at Callanwolde, during which top Atlanta interior and floral designers transform the spartan rooms for the holidays. (The tours will continue during the annual holiday showhouse event, Dec. 6-17, but Christmas at Callanwolde admission will apply.)

Decorated for the holidays or not, the Candler manse’s spacious, high-ceilinged rooms have stories to tell. Some facts guests learn on the tour include:

• A portrait of Charles Howard Candler is the first stop, just inside the porte cochere (covered side entrance). The text panel describes the Coca-Cola president from 1916 to 1923 as a "shrewd businessman." His innovations included, during the energy rationing of World War I, devising a method to make Coke syrup without heat to dissolve the sugar, "saving the company millions."

• The 1920 Aeolian Organ in the Great Hall has 3,742 pipes snaking above ceilings and inside walls, with pressurized wind to move sound powered by electric blowers in the basement and attic. The organ cost $60,000, and its various mechanisms weigh more than 10 tons. Candler could not play the instrument, but his wife, Flora Glenn Candler, could, and their two daughters took lessons on it. Marcel Dupre, organist at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, one of many famed musicians who performed at Callanwolde, played a concert on the Aeolian in 1924.

• The massive (50 feet by 30 feet) Great Hall boasts walnut paneling of the sort once used in Pullman passenger cars, obtained through Southern Railway.

• Flora Glenn Candler's collection of porcelain birds by British sculptor Dorothy Doughty are displayed upstairs in the Callan Cafe, a converted bedroom. The sole Candler piece of furniture that remains is a simple chair positioned under towering stained glass windows on the Grand Staircase.

• Out back, the Barn is a reminder of Howard Candler's vision for Callanwolde, the mansion's grandeur aside, as a woodsy retreat from what the tour script describes as "the bustle of downtown Atlanta" in the early 20th century. Originally housing horses and cows, it awaits a still-to-be-funded renovation that will convert it into classrooms and an artist-in-residence studio.

Callanwolde attracts roughly 5,000 students for classes each year, and Johnson would like to grow that number and the art center’s expanding outreach programs that serve people with special needs, seniors, veterans and low-income families.