One day, a garden will grow on the spot dotted with broken stone and old timbers. But for now, the site on Fairburn Road is but a reminder of an old house and a past time.
The Wilson house, built in the years just before the Civil War, has been torn down. Heavy equipment leveled what was left of the structure last month. City inspectors declared the house — what was left of it — unsafe. With its destruction, Atlanta lost one of three existing antebellum homes.
Its demise may have been inevitable. The house, built by Judge William Asbury Wilson between 1856-59, had been empty for years. It housed Wilson family descendants until the 1960s, when it was sold to a nearby hospital. Another hospital took over that facility — the old house, too. In time, the only occupants of the Wilson house crawled, slithered or flew.
Now, a neighborhood planning unit hopes to put a garden on the spot where Union soldiers once camped.
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