A Brief History of Glenridge Hall
In the winter of 1927 Thomas K Glenn
met Elizabeth Ewing, courted her, and in September
married her. He was 59; she was 48. TK had been a widower for thirteen
years, raised two sons, and amassed a considerable fortune. Elizabeth
persuaded him it was time to spend the money. In 1928 the couple commissioned
Atlanta society architects to design houses for four different pieces
of property Glenn owned: a Paces Ferry Road Italianate villa designed
by Francis Smith (directly across from the already
famous Swan House), a Sea Island Rococo-style beach house by Philip
Schutze, a Sandy Springs Tudor country house by Samuel
Inman Cooper, and a simple but elegant four-bedroom Neil Reid
style mountain cottage on the Highlands Country Club golf course.
Glenn decided to start with the Tudor country house
on the four-hundred acre Sandy Springs farm he had purchased in 1915.
Elizabeth fully intended to “outdo” her new sister-in-law Flora
Glenn Candler’s famous Tudor-style home “Callanwolde.”
All through 1928 Sam Cooper and the newlyweds created and refined three
complete sets of blueprints, and even then made further additions and
improvements while the house was being built. Construction of the mansion
and its separate five-car garage and staff house for eleven took sixty
workmen all of 1929 to complete. Meantime the Glenns made several voyages
to Europe to collect enough art and furniture to fill twenty rooms.
Glenridge Hall officially opened in October 1930 to celebrate Sam Cooper’s
engagement.
The Depression was clearly not going away,
and so TK, banker and businessman, decided against building the other
three houses.
From 1915 to 1930 TK had already developed his Sandy
Springs farm into a fully self-sustaining agricultural experiment with
a five-horse stable, blacksmith and carpenter’s shops, massive
cow barn, state-of-the-art dairy, smoke house, tractor and equipment
barn, and three spacious duplexes for eighteen resident workers. Throughout
the Depression the farm produced a wide range of seasonal crops, feed,
seed, poultry, cattle, swine, dairy products, fruit, nuts, and even
their own honey. TK also had built a skeet range with two trap houses,
a rustic club house, eight miles of shaded bridle trails, a two-hog
barbeque pit, and a covered picnic pavilion that seated 200. He frequently
invited all the employees of Trust Company Bank, or
Atlantic Steel, or Coca Cola, or Georgia
Power to enjoy true Southern hospitality.
The opening of Glenridge Hall, however, transformed
“The Farm” into a grand country estate and TK Glenn, a Southern
Gentleman Farmer, into a 20th- Century American Country Squire. Although
it was a fifteen miles from town, an invitation to Glenridge was always
worth the trip.
And so from 1930 to 1946 TK and Elizabeth enjoyed
Glenridge both as a quiet rural weekend retreat and as a permanent stage
set for lavish social and corporate entertaining. Although his grown
sons Wadley and Wilbur moved into the “Boys’ Wing”
at Glenridge Hall year round, TK and Elizabeth continued to reside during
the week in the top two floors of the Biltmore Apartment House.
In June 1946 with both his daughters-in-law expecting,
TK announced his intention to leave Glenridge Hall to his firstborn
grandchild. Sadly, in July he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and
died in October before committing his intention to paper. His widow
remained in Atlanta exactly one year and then decamped to the Waldorf
Towers in Manhattan where she died in 1970.
Wadley and Wilbur continued to live in Glenridge Hall,
each with his own family now, until 1950 and 1951 when they built separate
homes elsewhere on the estate. Glenridge Hall sat empty until 1952 when
Westminster Schools rented the mansion and its staff house as a dormitory
for 25 girls, 10 boys, and 8 adults. In 1964 Westminster built dorms
on campus and moved out of the Hall. From 1964 to 1966 the house again
stood empty and subject to vandalism by those brazen enough to sneak
through the woods or up the mile-long driveway. To prevent further damage,
Wadley and Wilbur moved the Glenridge farm manager and his family of
five into the Hall, but by the mid-seventies the farm had completely
ceased to function. On Derby Day (the first Saturday in May) 1980, TK’s
firstborn grandchild Frances moved back into Glenridge Hall to begin
her lifelong ambition to restore and preserve the seriously endangered
house.
During the 1970’s the Glenridge Hall property
had been broken into four pieces by the construction of GA400 freeway
and Abernathy Road. The brothers first sold the farmland east of GA400
to John Portman for a major office development called Northpark. Then
in 1979 Frances discovered that her father and uncle had also been persuaded
to sell the northwest quadrant, containing Glenridge Hall, to developer
Frank Carter for yet another office park. She was furious and spent
a year convincing her father to pull the Hall and 47 acres around it
out of the deal. Everyone, except her fiancé Joey Mayson, suspected
Frances surely had lost her mind.
By 1987 Frances and her husband had firmly established
Glenridge Hall as an architectural masterpiece, a unique regional treasure,
and a social, cultural, and civic landmark for Sandy Springs. Sadly,
on September 12, 1987, the day after giving birth to their daughter,
Frances Glenn Mayson died of massive infection. Not long after, Joseph
Mayson took early retirement from his college professorship to become
a full time single parent and to continue his wife’s dream of
restoring, preserving, and sharing Glenridge Hall.
In 1996 Dr. Wadley Glenn’s widow (also named
Frances) decided to put Glenridge Hall into a trust, and so honored
both her father-in-law and her daughter’s intentions that Glenridge
Hall remain a living legacy to the family of TK Glenn and to serve and
enhance the community of Sandy Springs.