Blueprints for the Butler Mansion: The Richards House

We must start this post with an apology. As hard as we tried, we couldn't find a picture in which our last contestant figures as the main focus. It appears that it was usually photographed when people were trying to get shots of its neighbors--the Capital City Club to the right and the Leyden residence to the left. Below you have a cropped picture with a decent lateral view of the house, but it's better if you follow our links to all the images available, to get a clearer idea. From some angles, this mansion looks like your typical (and, I must say, almost pretty) Victorian house. From others, you can get a glimpse at the building that was considered among the most ornate (read: gaudiest) in Atlanta before the Dougherty-Hopkins residence was built, outrunning even our previous contestant, the Governor's mansion. 

                                                                                                                       Image from Peachtree Street, Atlanta

                                                  Name: the Richards-Abbott residence 

                                                  Built: 1884 

                                                  Demolished: around 1915

                                                  Location: intersection of Peachtree and Ellis streets

Our house above was a three-story affair of orange brick and terra cota, occupying a 59 by 275-foot lot on the block between Cain and Ellis streets. (You can see its original color in this picture.) It was "elaborately embellished with turrets, gargoyles, dormer windows, and porches," according to our good and reliable friend, the Peachtree Street, Atlanta book. This contestant's history, and more images, after the jump.

The house was built in 1884, for Robert H. Richards, a native of London whose parents had crossed the ocean when he was thirteen. Richards amassed his fortune by running a chain of bookstores in Georgia and Tennessee before the war and then investing in railroad stocks, after the war. The latter enterprise alone brought him a quarter of a million dollars. In 1865, he became vice-president of the Atlanta National Bank, of which he was co-founder, along with Gen. Alfred Austell. 

He, of course, settled in Atlanta with his wife, Josephine, and built himself a house. A house meant to be impressive as befitted such a distinguished citizen. And then he died and she remarried, in 1895, to yet another distinguished citizen--Benjamin F. Abbott, veteran and prominent attorney.  (Parenthetically, the Richards mausoleum in Oakland Cemetery, where both Richards and his wife rest, is also an imposing construction.) 

You can find variations on the image we used for the Richards mansion here and here, but I think the only picture from which you can get the right idea about both its dimensions and its ornate front is this aerial shot of the Leyden house. The building to your left is the Richards-Abbott residence. The building to your right and partially obscured by the Leyden house is the Governor's mansion.

Image from ATLhistory.com

In my opinion. the Richards residence shares some of its advantages with the Governor's mansion featured yesterday, since they are about the same size, both have ornate exteriors and are neighbors to the Leyden house, like the Butler mansion was. I personally appreciate this house's gable over the Governor's mansion cupola. The colors are obviously wrong, but perhaps the shape of this house, that could allow for a spacious ballroom on the third floor  and that could more easily permit for a wrap-around veranda makes up for that? What do you think?

In any case, thanks for reading and don't forget to cast your vote tomorrow!