We are grieving. Perhaps that is presumptuous. I am grieving, and yet, I do know countless others who feel as I do: It happened too fast, like ripping a Band-Aid off a cut too soon and too quickly. It still stings: Glenridge Hall is no more, and we are left with our grief and far more questions than answers.
Why? Why so soon? Why such secrecy? Why not preserve it for our community use? Why didn’t we have more time to fight to save it?
Why did the family insist on tearing it down … on being (in the words of a family adviser) "in control"? Why sell all of the furnishings at auction in New Orleans rather than Sandy Springs?
Why not a good will gesture to invite the Sandy Springs Garden Club to rescue plant material and garden ornaments from the immaculately manicured grounds? And, if in the end it had to come down, why not salvage paneling, doors, hardware, newel posts, windows – priceless architectural elements that are, in fact, historical and completely irreplaceable?
Why were we told the family wanted to be in control when we were also told that the buyer, developer Ashton Woods, required all buildings on the property to be removed prior to closing? Why? Why? Why?
The secrecy leaves me flat. One week before it was demolished, before the trees leafed out, I drove around to the nearby office park to view it one last time in its woodland setting. I truly believed it would survive. I believed in the last minute conversion. I believed in the better angels of the family and its advisers. I believed as I have always done that the possibilities would win over impossibilities. I was wrong, so very wrong, and now I grieve.
I grieve for the beautiful 1929 Tudor Revival home and landscape I toured as a young interior designer finding inspiration for my work and for my own home and gardens. I grieve for the family, torn, as I have been told, by this tragic choice and perhaps haunted by past demons I can only imagine.
I grieve for a process that was handled clandestinely. I grieve for a developer willing to devalue such a legacy in order to fill its coffers. I grieve for our city leadership that didn’t rise up – surely our leadership knew long before we did. I grieve for the one nameless city employee who had to sign the demolition permit.
I grieve for my community, which wasn’t seen by the family that had lived in our midst for decades as worthy of bringing into the conversation. And, I grieve for a family that chose to tear down their house – their home – a choice implying to me a far deeper wound than that of a backhoe bucket on the beauty of its façade.
In the midst of my questions, I remind myself it’s not my place to judge. I cannot know what I would have done given circumstances I will never know and a life I’ve never lived. Still, it seems humanly impossible not to judge harshly when something is so indisputably amiss. And at last, I am left again with more questions than answers:
What choices have I made that might be judged as wrong by outsiders looking in? What might I do differently today to bring about a different outcome tomorrow? What might we do to be a city and community this family could have called on for answers, support, kindness, good will?
What do we do with our grief, and how do we move forward while we watch a backhoe reduce such beauty to rubble, a parade of dump trucks take away a part of our shared history, and a family move on without so much as a: “We’re sorry. We know it’s hard. It’s hard for us, and we are grieving, too.”
About the Author
