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Margaret Mitchell’s Atlanta
The 75th Anniversary of GWTW
By Martha Steger
Margaret Mitchell’s Atlanta: The 75th Anniversary of GWTW
Late-1930s, Depression-racked readers devoured Gone with the Wind for its compelling characters surviving amidst hardship and ruins. This year’s 75th-anniversary, with special tours and overnight packages, sparks a good opportunity to discover Margaret Mitchell’s Atlanta, particularly the apartment she affectionately called “The Dump” (now a museum); and nearby Clayton County, where she spent childhood summers listening to her great-grandfather Fitzgerald’s Civil War tales of cotton and Southern belles. Nice antebellum ambience remains in Jonesboro – but no original or reconstructed Fitzgerald homes.  
In visiting Atlanta, you discover that Margaret Munnerlyn Mitchell – whose only book sold a million copies within the first six months -- never owned a home and lived the majority of her life within a seven-block radius of Peachtree Street, seven years of it at the modest apartment #1 at 990 Peachtree Street Northeast, where she wrote most of her blockbuster novel between 1926-29. An office building now stands at 1401 Peachtree Street, where the Mitchell home in which she grew up once stood. Within a 30-minutes’ drive lies Jonesboro, the town where her great-grandfather’s unassuming farmhouse once stood – the inspiration for Tara; Mitchell hated Hollywood for turning it into the elegant manor house of the 1939 feature film.
Begin your tour with the Margaret Mitchell House’s small, three-room apartment that she – a $25-a-week journalist with her Peggy Mitchell by-line for The Atlanta Journal -- and her second husband, John Marsh, rented to cut expenses while paying extensive medical bills. Ninety-five percent of the furnishings are from the mid-1800s-early 1930s, based on what Mitchell had when she lived there. A used, circa 1923 Remington typewriter sits in the living room, while the nearby Atlanta-Fulton Library at One Margaret Mitchell Square exhibits her original 1923 Remington with other personal items.
Walking into the apartment’s matchbox-sized kitchen with its 1920s Eureka gas range, the guide explains that Mitchell’s apartment life wasn’t completely without luxury – her father sent over a cook to make meals for her and Marsh. It was Marsh who encouraged her to write her own book after informing her she’d read everything at the time in Atlanta’s library.
Stop in for lunch – or perhaps just a glass of wine, as the food is only average – at the Georgian Terrace Hotel, 659 Peachtree Street Northeast. It was here that Macmillan editor Harold Latham stayed in 1935 and met Mitchell socially – and here that Mitchell, with great reservation, delivered her crumbling, old envelopes of disorganized chapters after he asked her to send him any book she might someday write. The hotel was also the site of 1939’s big party following the movie premier across the street at Loew’s Grand Theater. 
To visit the last site where Mitchell was publicly seen, go to Peachtree and 13th streets, where a speeding automobile struck her as she and Marsh headed to a British film at the Peachtree Art Theatre in August 1949, three months before her 49th birthday. She died five days later; her grave in Atlanta’s Oakland Cemetery lies beneath a “Marsh” headstone for her and her husband. A flapper in her day, she was a woman of her time in many ways, yet ahead of her time for her strong women’s-rights advocacy. To those who thought she might care what they said or wrote about her or her book, she would undoubtedly say, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”
Allow additional time for the two permanent exhibitions at the Margaret Mitchell House, operated by the Atlanta History Center: “The Making of a Film Legend: Gone with the Wind,” showing how the best-selling novel was transformed into a film classic; and “Margaret Mitchell: A Passion for Character,” with Mitchell’s girlhood writings among displayed items.IB
Martha Steger is a Midlothian-based member of the Society of American Travel Writers.
Resources for your trip…
margaretmitchellhouse.com
(hours, ticket costs, special events)
visitscarlett.com
(Clayton County sites/events related to Mitchell’s Fitzgerald family, including the living-history, 75th anniversary event on June 11 with first-person, costumed docents)
citypass.com/atlanta/history-center
(Atlanta’s CityPass saves money and time if visiting many attractions – the Georgia Aquarium, Inside CNN Studio Tour, World of Coca-Cola, High Museum of Art and others, but the Margaret Mitchell House and the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site aren’t on the pass.)
atlanta.net/hotels/packages.aspx.
For area accommodations
Note: Check ideastations.org/ in late summer or early fall for date that Georgia Public Broadcasting’s documentary, Margaret Mitchell, will air in central Virginia.
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