By Michael Green
Fourth in a series
MILTON, Ga. | Preservation of historic landmarks in Atlanta has a reputation for meeting with mixed success. Having burned in 1865 during the Battle of Atlanta, the city was rebuilt in a hurry. In their quest for growth and progress, Atlanta’s developers have often chosen to tear buildings down and erect new ones rather than preserve the old. Few antebellum Civil War structures exist.
George Washington Collier’s Store and Post Office was one of the first pre-Civil War businesses established in Five Points at 23 Peachtree Street. During the Civil War destruction of Atlanta, the grocery and post office burned down. In 1866, Collier rebuilt the store on the same site and eventually constructed the Collier Building there.
Wash Collier built a very fine building in Atlanta, the Aragon Hotel, in 1896. Collier’s rebuilding and new construction efforts around the Five Points area transformed him into a newly-minted millionaire.
After the Civil War, Collier owned 700 acres of land including land lot 104, the 1820s Collier home place. The house had been partially burned during the Battle of Atlanta. Wash Collier rebuilt the house in 1866, and the property would be sold in the 1940s. Sherwood Forest developed into an upscale residential neighborhood on the former Collier land.
Interstate 85 was planned, surveyed, and constructed. It would separate the Collier homeplace from brother Andrew J. Collier’s land holdings on Tanyard Branch and the mill he operated on the west side of the roadway cuts. Andrew J. Collier’s mill was near the bloody Civil War Battle of Peachtree Creek. The family developed Collier Woods subdivision and the Anjaco Road neighborhood from sales of Andrew Collier’s property.
My great-great grandmother, Elizabeth Collier Liddell, was the sister of George Washington Collier. She grew up in her father, Meredith Collier’s, house. The land adjacent to it was developed into the Ansley Park neighborhood. Meredith Collier, who had become a member of the State Legislature, passed away in 1863 and was laid to rest on the grounds of land lot 104.
Meredith Collier designated land for the male heirs. Other property and assets were allocated to the female heirs. Elizabeth soon married and moved to the Thomas Haney Liddell farm, located near the present-day intersection of Steve Reynolds Boulevard and I-85.
Although Meredith Collier’s house was largely destroyed during the Battle of Atlanta, George Washington Collier rebuilt it in 1866. He lived in the house until his death in 1903. Originally buried on the property, Meredith and his wife were exhumed and reinterred at Westview Cemetery.
The house remained in the Collier family until the 1940s. Atlanta’s Sherwood Forest was developed on the property.
Noted architect R. Kennan Perry restored the house in the early 1950s. In 1958, Jimmy Bentley, former Comptroller General for the State of Georgia, purchased the home. The restored 1866 house is a noteworthy preservation success in Atlanta, standing on a knoll at 1649 Lady Marian Lane.
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