A Place to Call Home
The Foundation owns and operates historic house museums in Thomson, Athens and Atlanta. Each is distinctively Southern in architecture and history. The educational programming conducted through each home is inspired by the perspectives and worldviews of the brilliant men who created them.
Hickory Hill, the last home of Thomas E. Watson, provided its owner a gracious and legitimate rural setting from which to project commentary on the world. Barely postbellum, the neoclassical home and its inviting 250 acres today accommodates school groups seeking firsthand understanding of studies from environmental education to Georgia history. Quarterly exhibits present dramatic issues from the tragedies and triumphs of Watson’s life. Past displays have included the artwork and diaries of Southern naturalists, memories and photographs of child labor in the South, and poignant letters from the Sage and his granddaughters.
A landmark colloquia program, the Hickory Hill Forum gathers scholars of the humanities for cordial, disciplined and moderated discussions of broad Southern themes. We’ve wrestled with Southern expansionism, gazed at the balance between individualism and community in the South, and tracked the wide expanse of Southern historiography. We’ve gathered contemporary Southern authors to reflect on region through the eyes of their characters and those of Faulkner and Welty, and then cried with them as we read O’Connor from the dining room of Andalusia.
The T.R.R. Cobb House, now back in Athens, shines pink on Prince. Cobb was a legal theorist whose ruminations on the origins of slavery are still in print. Codifier of Georgia law and the primary author of the Confederate Constitution, Cobb died at the battle of Fredericksburg defending his country. Today his antebellum home hosts school groups and university classes. Graduate students of historic preservation poke and prod and marvel at the house and its grounds.
The T.R.R. Cobb Forum gathers scholars from the humanities and law to discuss themes of Southern jurisprudence. Wierding the War turns on their head traditional approaches to Civil War history.
The Goodrum House in Atlanta was designed by architect Philip Trammell Shutze, son of the South and longtime resident of Atlanta. A staunch classicist and sardonic critic of modernism in any form, Shutze more than any other single designer was responsible for creating beauty in a city still stung from the ravages of the War. Shutze’s award-winning designs rarely strayed from the best the Western tradition had to offer, and the Goodrum House is considered among the finest examples of English Regency style architecture anywhere. Now under restoration, the Goodrum House will present its design brilliance as its primary exhibit.
