The History Center consists of a museum with several permanent and traveling exhibitions, three historic houses, a few gardens, playhouses, shops, and restaurants. We arrived just after the center opened. We bought our tickets and scheduled our tours of the Swan House and the Tullie Smith House. (They wanted you to have timed tickets to attend tours of these houses, but it seems they only really care about these if the center is really busy. They didn't even bother to look at our tickets when we showed up for our tours because there weren't many other people there.)
We started in one of the exhibitions in the museum, but left before we finished it to visit the Swan House. (I'll get back to the museum later.) Leaving the museum, we had to pass through a wooded area and cross over this bridge, passing a few of the gardens on our way.
The Swan House is one of the most photographed buildings in Atlanta. It was built in 1928 by the Inman Family and was lived in by the family until 1965, when it was turned over the Atlanta Historical Society. It's unique for a historic home in that almost every single item in the house is original to the home and was used by the family.
The back of the house is almost as beautiful as the front. There are lots of swan motifs all throughout the house and structure. Supposedly, Emily Inman bought a pair of pier tables (which now reside in the dining room) with beautifully carved swans on the legs and decided to build the house around these showpieces and incorporate swans into the rest of the house.
This is the view of the gardens. The house was simply one of the most beautiful I've ever been in. Only the Hillwood Estate in Washington, D.C., I think, can compare to the splendor and careful design and decor that went into the building of this house. Despite all the beauty of the house, I think the kitchens were actually my favorite room. I find old kitchens to be terribly fascinating.In the terrace of the Swan House, there is an exhibit of porcelain, furniture, silver, rugs, and other decorative arts belonging to Phillip Trammell Shutze, the architect of the Swan House and many commercial and residential buildings in Atlanta. After his death in 1982, his collection of decorative arts was given to the Atlanta History Center.
Our next stop was the Tullie Smith Family farm house (including a detached kitchen), a small mid-nineteenth century plantation home which was moved from it's original location in Dekalb County to the Altanta History Center in 1969.
The farm includes many out-buildings including a dairy, blacksmith shop, smokehouse, double corncrib, slave cabin, and barn, as well as traditional vegetable, herb, field, flower, and slave gardens. A farm cat was even hanging out by the well. I always appreciate a place that keeps a cat or two in residence.
I wonder who gets to eat the fruits and vegetables they are actually growing there.
The small one-room slave cabin could have used a little bit more of a dynamic presentation.
After exploring the farm complex, we headed over to the Swan Coach House for lunch. It was pretty busy since it caters to not just museum visitors but a lot of Buckhead residents. Think upper-crust English tea time and ladies all dressed up for lunch with their country club friends. The dining room was decorated in all floral and pink. I think David was one of three men in the whole establishment. The food was good--not spectacular--but our salads and frozen fruit salad were refreshing and filling.
After lunch, we went back to the museum to finish up the exhibit we had already started and to breeze through the rest of them. (Our time was getting short so we really didn't get to spend as much time in the other exhibits as I would have liked.) We spent the bulk of our time in the "Metropolitan Frontiers" exhibit which chronicles the urban history of Atlanta as it moved from a rural town, to transportation hub, to a commercial city, and then a suburban metropolis. (This is a picture of a 1920 Hanson automobile which was built in Atlanta and is one of two known to exist.) 
I thought this exhibition was very well done and incredibly fascinating. Atlanta is a very unique city with a very unique history. I thought this exhibit did a remarkable job capturing its growth and culture. We also spent a little bit of time in the "Turning Point: The American Civil War" exhibit though it does not stand out from many of the other Civil War exhibitions we viewed along this trip. I did like the design and layout of the exhibit, though. We by-passed an exhibition on Bobby Jones because neither David nor I particularly care much for golf and I only paused long enough in their Southern folk arts exhibit to admire the quilts. Their temporary exhibition at the time was a display of several pages of the manuscript of Gone with the Wind and the publication of the book. Since we had visited the Margaret Mitchell House the day before, I found it a tad more interesting than I probably normally would have. The last exhibition is their Centennial Olympic Games Museum, all about the Olympics, naturally. David was anxious to get home to help his parents continue with their never-ending move, so we had to speed-walk our way through this part. I definitely plan on going back to the History Center the next time we visit Georgia.
Since the Margaret Mitchell House is run and operated by the Atlanta History Center, I'm including photos of our trip to "the dump," as Mitchell called it. This house (which is really a grand house that was converted into apartments) is located in Midtown. This is the front of the house.....
....and this is the back. The first floor apartment on the left is the one that Mitchell and her husband lived in while she wrote Gone with the Wind. It's a small apartment and so the tour is rather short but still interesting. (Though our docent could have done with a few less personal details.) 
To recap: go to the Atlanta History Center.
