The Andrew Calhoun House: A Neighbor's Gaze

Lyrics

From my new windows, across the damp red clay…
I watched you rise.
Just a short walk down, then a right on Habersham.
Number 1895.
My bones were still settling, the plaster dust still fine in the air.
Nineteen twenty-three.
And then your frame went up.

I remember the scent of cut pine, the Georgia earth turned over.
The sound of hammers, a different crew but the same rhythm.
My man was Francis Palmer Smith, a meticulous hand.
Yours was Neel Reid.
I could feel his vision from here.
That Classical Revival tongue we both learned to speak.
He gave you a voice of limestone and perfect columns.
A conversation started before either of you knew my name.

Oh, Andrew Calhoun House, my handsome neighbor.
We were born of the same fever, the same decade's dream.
Two declarations in brick and slate, set down on this old land.
Your Neel Reid, my Pringle & Smith…
Drawing parallel lines of grandeur on the Buckhead map.
You on Habersham, me on Cherokee.
Silent partners in the founding of a certain kind of quiet.

I saw your lights blink on for the first time.
Saw the cars pull up the drive for Mr. Calhoun.
We stood guard, didn't we?
Defining the look of this place before it even had a settled name.
People would drive by, point at your perfect symmetry,
then point at mine.
They didn’t know the architects’ names.
They just knew this was the new Atlanta.
This was progress, spelled out in porticos and boxwood hedges.

And then your maker, Neel Reid, was gone.
Nineteen twenty-six.
He barely saw the forest for the saplings he had planted.
He designed the party but couldn't stay.
You outlived him, right from the start.
A testament, a beautiful, lonely echo of a mind that moved so fast.
We are the ones left to hold the long silence.

So good evening, neighbor.
Another summer night, a hundred years on.
The same oaks throw their shadows on our lawns.
Your lights are on.
My lights are on.
We're still here.
1895 Habersham.
21 Cherokee.
We remember the beginning.