Group Fights to Save Apartment ‘Gone With the Wind’ Author Called ‘The Dump’ : Apartment Was Once Home of ‘Gone With the Wind’ : Atlanta Group Wants to Save ‘The Dump’

ATLANTA — Margaret Mitchell called it “The Dump.” And in its current state, the apartment where she wrote much of “Gone With The Wind” shows the effects of care by those who, frankly, couldn’t give a damn.

The three-story brick-and-stucco building sits in the middle of a muddy lot in mid-town Atlanta. Its windows are broken or boarded, its roof is sunken and torn, its walls are sooty.

But a group with $850,000 in financial backing wants to save the 74-year-old building, saying it represents possibly the last chance for Atlanta to properly honor one of its most celebrated residents.

Developers, on the other hand, say “The Dump” can’t be restored and should be razed to create a park to complement a recent flurry of construction in the neighborhood.

Mitchell and her husband, John Marsh, rented a first-floor apartment at what was then called Windsor House Apartments from 1926 to 1932. She was killed in a 1949 automobile accident 13 years after her epic novel of the Old South and Reconstruction was published.

The fate of the building is in federal court. Trammell Crow Co., which purchased the property in 1985, sued the city in January after Mayor Andrew Young refused to sign a demolition permit for the apartment building. Young had said he would support demolition as a last resort, but the preservationist group came along and Young agreed to try to save the building.

Trammell Crow had begun landscaping work around the building. Meanwhile, the group, Mitchell House Inc., is drumming up support for a Mitchell memorial project.

John Taylor, president of the group, says most of the other Atlanta sites where Mitchell lived have been destroyed, leaving few physical reminders of the writer.

‘This is one of our last opportunities,” he said.

Taylor said wants to restore the building to the way it was in Mitchell’s time, display the apartment where she did her writing and establish a writer-in-residence program.

While previous attempts at “Gone With The Wind” attractions focused on the popular 1939 movie, Taylor said the apartment project would emphasize Mitchell’s book.

“We’d like to keep the literary aspect in the forefront,” he said.

The literary emphasis also would keep the project from becoming merely a tourist attraction, he said, though the lack of a major “Gone With The Wind” center in Atlanta is a major impetus for the effort.

Taylor said the restoration effort has raised about $850,000 in cash, pledges and pledged services. He said it also has the endorsement from Mitchell’s only remaining heirs--two nephews.

Among the opponents are those who were acquainted with Mitchell and say she would be against the memorial.

“I’m opposed to saving what she called ‘The Dump’ because Margaret Mitchell herself told me on several occasions that she wanted no museums or landmarks preserved in her memory,” columnist Celestine Sibley wrote recently in the Atlanta Constitution.

But Taylor said that there are many misconceptions about Mitchell and that the project would offer a chance to clarify her background. And the recent announcement that a “Gone With The Wind” sequel is being written by a Virginia author will generate even more interest, he added.

John Decker, marketing principal at Trammel Crow, said the developer sponsored two studies of the site before deciding that restoring the apartment was not feasible.

One study, he said, found that the deterioration of the building was worse than expected. The other concluded that the funds needed for the project--an estimated $2 million--would not be available.