The beautiful Chinquapin Plantation in Thomasville, Georgia is a distinctive piece of real estate offering both formal garden spaces and plenty of unspoiled land. The plantation was owned by Alexandra Kauka and her late husband, German cartoonist, Rolf Kauka. A Worth article from 2006 details Kauka's decision to donate some of the land next to the estate. The home itself is located a bluff overlooking the Ochlocknee River. The Mediterranean-influenced main-house offers nearly 18,000 square feet of wide verandas, porches, public rooms for entertaining and numerous private wings and suites. The home was completely remodeled by its present owner in 1981 and then restored and expanded in 2000. The property includes a separate three-bedroom guest cottage located across the motor court from the main-house, six tenant houses, a pool house with solar-heated saline pool, four-car detached garage, barns, stables, kennels and a skeet range. The listing doesn't give a price.
The price on this one is a bit much but there's only so much real estate on Tybee Island. Tybee Island is a wonderful vacation destination in Georgia with beautiful white sand beaches and the famed Tybee Island lighthouse. Today's home is a classic 1928 Tybee Island beach cottage. It's a four-bedroom home on 2.3 acres that includes 160 feet of ocean beachfront. The home is definitely older and in need of updates but it does have nice wood paneling and beautiful wraparound porches designed for leisurely summer afternoons. This home is listed at $12.9 million.
Atlanta's condo market may be slowing down but that doesn't stop people from building and planning. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution profiles Taz Anderson, a local entrepreneur who is behind a new luxury residential tower in Vinings. Anderson and his son Geoff, president of Taz Anderson Realty Co., are working on a condo project called The Aberdeen, an upscale residential development in Vinings with 55 units, some up to 4,000 square feet.
The 12-story tower will have views of downtown Atlanta and Buckhead. The project takes its Scottish name seriously and the units all have names of Scottish origin. A penthouse is listed at $2.9 million. Eleven buyers have reportedly signed contracts thus far. A healthy number but a little shy of what is generally considered enough sales to build. Given the precarious state of several other Atlanta projects it seems to be a bit of a dice roll.
Roswell, Georgia is getting a new solar-powered residential community. Weatherford Place will offer eight homes on 1.6 acres of land bordering Crossville Creek. The small community will be designed to supply its own energy. The development is going for platinum LEED certification for green building, which is the highest designation.
Each home uses passive solar design as well as solar panels and has low flow plumbing fixtures and a system to harvest and store rainwater. The energy generated by the homes goes out into the power grid and the power company credits the home for the power it produces. The homes are designed to use less energy than traditionally built homes. The homes come in several different styles offering 2,500 to 3,900 square feet of space. Each has an artist's studio with a full bath over the attached two-car garage. These homes are on the market starting at around $750,000 each.
I don't have great pictures or a lot of details on this one but it's special enough to cover based on size alone. This is the home of the Craven family, who owns Craven Original, a company that creates fine home gardening products and pottery. The home is an Italian-style villa on a whopping 1,410 acres at the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in a small town north of Atlanta, Georgia. There are currently seven homes on the property. It took the Craven family 28 years to collect the property which is also home to 850 cows, 450 of which have calves. There are 20 barns and sheds for hay storage. The property includes miles of fencing and gates spread out over three counties. The land also includes five ponds and three miles of Chandler Creek that could maintain a 250 acre lake to produce power and water for municipalities. The land itself is zoned for 2400 plus homes, golf course, retail center or can be left as a horse and cattle ranch.
The main home is 18,000 square feet and is built on a grand scale with 16 to 32 foot ceilings and 317 arches and a 540,000 artistically laid brick, tile roof, two eight-foot by 16-foot chandeliers in the great hall. All the architectural details such as cupolas, balustrades, fountains and statues were sculpted and cast by Craven Original. Much of it such as the ironwork was manufactured by members of the Craven family. I'm told that the property is appraised at $49 million, but is available for $31 million.
Like me, the Real Estalker Mama has a weakness for gawking at truly outlandish homes. And he unearthed a doozy. La Reve, the home of Hubert and Norma Humphrey in Cumming Georgia has just about everything you could think of. Private bowling alley? Check. Golf course? Yup. How about a huge move theater, a complete gym, massage room and a toy train room. The movie is a replica of Atlanta's Fox Theatre and the train room is a replica of the old Central Georgia Railroad from Atlanta to Macon to Savannah that Hubert Humphrey worked on for 17 years as a train conductor.
This home is another in the long line of what I call Xanadu homes, the ones where someone spends a great deal of cash constructing a home of epic proportions and then finds it a little unlivable. This one is approximately 47,000 square feet on 90 acres and is a stunning monument to excess. There are 82 rooms, two elevators and 62 televisions. The grounds include a heated swimming pool, pool house, spa, private playground, stables, tennis court, formal gardens and a guest house. At $45 million this is easily the most expensive estate in Georgia. As the Atlanta Constitution noted, it might be a while before this one is sold, homes of this magnitude often sit on the market for a while and although the home may well be worth the price, finding someone willing to pay it will be a challenge.
Today's home in the ritzy Tuxedo Park area of Atlanta was once the home of Robert Woodruff, former president of Coca-Cola. The five-bedroom home was built in the 1930s but has a new pool and pool house. The home is done in a sweeping Regency style, and decorated in that gracious, slightly old-fashioned style that fights with bare contemporary spaces for page space in Architectural Digest. All seems to be in perfect charming order except for that kitchen. This is one home that should not have black stone countertops. The home sits on seven well-landscaped acres. It is listed at $13.9 million.
Imagine walking through the tranquil Georgia woods and coming upon this modern home. One of the good things about having a lot of acreage is that you can have glass walls and not worry about your privacy. This home located ten minutes from downtown Newnan, Georgia (around an hour from Atlanta) is on a 200 acre farm that includes both a 20 acre stocked lake and 10 acre pond. The three-bedroom home has a family room, library/office, and a screened-in porch that juts away from the house and toward the water. This home is listed at $6.5 million.
California contemporary? Nope, this staged beauty is in Palmetto, Georgia. Like many modern homes, this one has a certain white and bright angularity with hefty doses of stainless steel. Fun details include a wading pool on the main level and a rooftop patio with tremendous views. The home sits on a hill on an acre of land. The design does highlight one issue I have seen in modern homes; a home with glass walls and an open floor plan doesn't always provide a good place to put a TV. Here they have put it high up on a wall in the double-height living area but it seems like this would probably provide a bit of a neck strain to view it way up there. The home has three bedrooms total. This home is listed at $775,000 which would be a fabulous deal in Southern California but seems a bit ambitious for the area.
Wildwood Farm offers the outdoor sportsman or perhaps the dedicated conservationist, the chance to own 533 acres of land in Concord, Georgia. The farm is a private recreational property that includes a 5,000-square-foot main home with a 2,500-square-foot stone veranda overlooking acres of wetlands. If you are interested in fishing, the property's eight lakes and ponds are fully stocked with fish. If you are into shooting, there is a 10-station sporting clays range, trap and skeet stations. The forests, open fields and miles of equestrian trails are managed for optimum wildlife and game habitat. The property is also home to a barn, workshop, dog kennels and a three-bedroom guest home. The home is listed at $12,750,000.
I don't know for certain but I suspect that this home is a case of dream homeitis, the unique condition in which a person of means, plans, designs, fusses over and eventually constructs the perfect abode only to decide to put it on the market a few years later. This French provincial-style home is tucked into the mountains in Northwest Georgia near where the Civil War battles of Stevenson's Line and Crow Valley took place. The six-bedroom home is 22,800 square feet and includes a 29' x 30' Grand Concert Hall which includes three viewing balconies and a Grisaille mural inspired by the Schoenbrunn Palace in Vienna, Austria. Other features include a movie theatre with soundproofed walls and surround sound, Centron "Smart Home" circuitry, guest quarters with complete gourmet kitchen and private entry, exercise room, and billiards room. The 55 acres include a two-stable barn, two lighted tennis courts, a saltwater pool, with three rock waterfalls and a pool house. This home is listed at $9.25 million.
Check out the new design of the atrium of the Marriott Marquis in Atlanta, Georgia. The giant atrium has been revamped by Thompson, Ventulett, Stainback and Associates with four new dining options: 'Sear' fine dining restaurant, 'High Velocity' sports bar, 'Pulse' lobby bar and a new Pool Bar. The atrium was already stunning with its arching balcony ribs and open space but now it is enhanced by a massive sail like structure that is very reminiscent of the Burj Al-Arab in Dubai. The 50-foot-tall structure is clad in resin panels that are backlit with LED lights that change color throughout the day. You can see a before picture here.
Usually our estate of the day celebrity Sundays take us to Los Angeles or New York but today there are two reasons to discuss Alpharetta, Georgia. The first bit of news comes from Celebrity Big Time Listings which reported that Whitney Houston sold her home in Alpharetta. She bought the home in 2003 for $1,388,888 and the home was on the market for $1,349,000. The home, which was used in the TV show "Being Bobby Brown" was sold in May at a loss.
Also looking to sell in Alpharetta is musician Usher. Usher, who recently married his soon-to-be baby mama who has three children already is probably in need of more space than this five bedroom, 8,022 square foot home can provide. The home is located in the Country Club of the South, a private golf course community. The Real Estalker reports that Usher paid $1,200,000 in December of 1998, buying the home from L.A. Reid. A story in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution says that when Usher was a 13-year-old new face that he vowed one day the house would belong to him. The house has also been featured on MTV Cribs. The home itself has the necessary musician requirements such as a hair salon, an exercise room for working those famous abs, a hair salon and a billiard room. The pics are few and a wee bit bland. The Real Estalker Mama already commented on the foible in wood that is the cabinet in the living room. It's not a bad house, just a bit tame. The home is listed at $1.95 million. Will Usher get that price? I wouldn't bet on it but hopefully he will do better than Whitney did.
Today my quest for a home for your Modern Monday takes us to Atlanta, Georgia. This home in an area between Midtown and Morningside has views of the Midtown skyline. The home has a beautiful pool and spa with waterfalls. There are four bedrooms total and a wide open floorplan with plenty of windows. The media room could use some serious help and the bathrooms seem a bit shabby but overall the home could be gorgeous with a bit of a snappier decorating scheme. This home is listed at $1,470,000.
Decorator show houses are often a mixed bag, on the one hand you get a freshly designed home with the latest trends and high-end appointments, on the other, too many decorators can often lead to a muddle of styles. Whitehall was built in the mid-1980s and was created based on a Louisiana plantation. The home was the Atlanta Symphony's Decorator Show House earlier this year. The home features one thing that most decorator show houses don't, a celebrity cameo. Country singer Kenny Rogers and his and business partner/decorator Jim Weinberg did the design work on the family/music room. The home also features the work of 29 other designers. The eight-bedroom home is on an over five-acre lot that also has a pool, spa, gazebo, formal gardens and fountains. There is also a two-bedroom apartment above the four-car garage. The home is listed at $7.9 million. After the jump, a rather dark kitchen for this light and bright home.
