1923: A Year Cast in Stone

Lyrics

[Intro]
Nineteen hundred and twenty-three.
Just a number. A ring on a tree.

[Verse 1]
The clay was still red under the pines.
The road just a rumor of ancient lines.
Then the blueprints arrived, rolled tight in a tube.
Signed Pringle & Smith. A promise of cube and roof.
The scent of fresh lumber, the bite of wet lime.
Erasing the quiet, one brick at a time.
Francis Palmer Smith, did you watch the walls rise?
See the balance you drew reflected in clear morning skies?

[Chorus]
And for one single year, the world held its breath.
Nineteen twenty-three.
The year the chatter of hammers gave birth to a hearth.
The year a man named Jones found his number on a door.
The year a Colonial Revival dream was cast in stone
On a forgotten forest floor.

[Verse 2]
H. Gordon Jones, did you stand on the porch in the dust?
Feel the grain of new oak, place your hope and your trust?
Did you smell the damp plaster, the promise of paint?
Imagine the echo of footsteps, a beautiful complaint?
Did you look through the glass of a window, still bare,
And see a whole lifetime waiting for you there?
A future of dinners, of seasons, of grace.
A new kind of history for this particular place.

[Chorus]
And for one single year, the world held its breath.
Nineteen twenty-three.
The year the chatter of hammers gave birth to a hearth.
The year a man named Jones found his number on a door.
The year a Colonial Revival dream was cast in stone
On a forgotten forest floor.

[Bridge]
All over Buckhead, the fever was on.
A symphony of construction from dusk until dawn.
New foundations poured where the wild violets grew.
Making the old maps obsolete, making everything new.
They called it a boom. A flourishing. A start.
This careful new symmetry, a work of high art.
But the road kept a secret, beneath the new stone.
Of a rhythm much older, a history unknown.

[Outro]
Then the last truck pulled away in the late autumn sun.
The year's work was over. The house was now one.
December fell silent. The new windows gleamed.
And twenty-one Cherokee Road began the long dream.
Nineteen twenty-three.