For nearly nine decades, the mansion on Peachtree Road has stood through it all — depression and boom, war and peace. Its brick walls have remained standing as other homes fell before Atlanta’s relentless expansion.
Now, for the second time in six years, the Randolph-Lucas House is facing possible demolition.
Preservationist groups again are rallying to save the structure, one of just a handful of mansions left on Atlanta’s signature street. They say a condominium homeowners organization is trying to renege on a deal, struck 15 years ago, to preserve the Buckhead mansion.
The 2500 Peachtree Condominium Association Inc. in March applied to the city for a permit to demolish the mansion at the intersection of Peachtree Road and Lindbergh Drive. It said the house, built in 1924, is deteriorating and dangerous. The city denied the request.
The association appealed and is scheduled to argue for the mansion’s demolition before the city’s Board of Zoning Adjustment in July.
For Bill Murray, a lifetime Buckhead resident and preservation enthusiast, the mansion is a reminder of when he delivered newspapers along Peachtree Road, his bicycle rattling along the sidewalks. One of his stops: the big house at Peachtree and Lindbergh.
“We don’t need to make an assumption that, because it was denied one time, it will be denied again,” said Murray, 64, a member of the Neighborhood Planning Unit of Buckhead. The planning unit, which makes community land-use recommendations to the city, will urge the zoning board to deny the appeal, he said.
“I don’t want to see anything happen to that house,” Murray said.
The condominium association’s lawyer, M. Hakim Hilliard, said the house is an accident waiting to happen. The association hired an engineer who concluded the structure is unsound, he said.
“At this point, [association members’] concern is safety for the residents, safety for the pedestrians and dealing with potential liabilities,” Hilliard said. “It’s got these homeowners in a bind.”
A bind that can be traced to 1997, when a developer asked the city for permission to build a 10-story housing complex. The City Council agreed to the development, with one stipulation: The mansion, placed on the city’s list of historic properties earlier in the decade, had to be preserved.
The developer agreed and, in 1998, moved the mansion to the southern edge of the property to make room for the condominiums. The complex, a block-and-stucco series of balconies and spires, rose behind it. The first units went on sale in 2000 — not a propitious time, it turned out. The complex nearly went bankrupt in the weak economy. The developer went into foreclosure and another development group took over the project, selling more than half the units at below-market prices.
In 2006, the homeowners association applied to the city to change the mansion’s status as a historic structure, the first step toward its demolition. City officials denied the request.
Since then, condo residents have tried unsuccessfully to find a buyer or tenants for the mansion, said Hilliard.
“What happened in that process is that the building deteriorated,” the lawyer said. Fully restoring the house, he said, could cost $1 million, which the association cannot afford.
At first glance, the mansion appears OK — no apparent holes in the roof, windows intact, a front door so solid it would give a bulldozer pause.
A closer look reveals some flaws. Cables stretch between chimneys on both ends of the house to keep them stable. Paint and caulking have chipped away from windows. No one can live in the house because it lacks a certificate of occupancy, which the city requires.
The mansion does need work, concedes Erica Danylchak, executive director of the Buckhead Heritage Society. But it’s hardly ready for a wrecking ball, she said.
“It’s the last mansion we have that tells the story of the early development of Peachtree Street” north of Midtown, said Danylchak.
The home derives its name from two families that occupied the house for more than 60 years.
Atlanta lawyer Hollins Nicholas Randolph, a descendant of Thomas Jefferson, commissioned construction of a mansion where Lindbergh dead-ends at Peachtree. In 1924, he and his wife, Caroline, moved in, joining an exodus of Atlantans from downtown.
In 1935, Arthur and Margaret Lucas, who owned several theaters in Atlanta, bought the house. Margaret Lucas lived in the house until she died in 1987.
The mansion was one of scores of stately residences lining Peachtree in the early years of the last century. A 1931 map at the Atlanta History Center depicts 61 single-family homes on Peachtree between Peachtree Battle and Piedmont Road, including the Randolph-Lucas House.
Now, only a few of the mansions remain on the entire stretch of Peachtree Street, once the address of hundreds of estates, said Boyd Coons, executive director of the Atlanta Preservation Center.
He compares the homeowners association’s efforts to demolish the Randolph-Lucas House to the Georgia Tech Foundation’s attempts to flatten the Crum & Forster Building, which opened on Spring Street in Midtown in 1928.
The foundation, owner of the building since 2007, tried to demolish it, but the city said no and designated it a landmark structure, meaning it’s protected by stringent historic regulations. The foundation recently applied to destroy part of the building.
Coons fears the residents of the condos, where the asking price of some units nears $1 million, may have more financial resources to get their way than those who oppose the mansion’s destruction.
“The formula in Atlanta,” he said, “seems to be to get an agreement, get what you want, then try to get out of the agreement.”
The association is only trying to rid the city of a structural menace, said Hilliard.
“What I’m dealing with is a building that’s dangerous,” he said. “What do you do when you find yourself in a situation like this?”
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