The Margaret Mitchell
House and Museum is the former home of the author
Margaret Mitchell situated in midtown Atlanta, Georgia.
It was whilst living here that she wrote the bulk
of her Pulitzer prize-winning novel, Gone With The
Wind. In addition to the house, there is a Visitor
Center and a museum building wholly devoted to the
filming of the 1939 movie based on this book.
The
house was built as a single-family residence at
the turn of the 20th century. After the original
family moved out prior to 1908, the house changed
hands, and would later be moved from the front yard
onto a new foundation built in the back yard. In
1919, the property owners converted it to an apartment
building. On her wedding day in 1925, Margaret Mitchell
and her husband, John Marsh, moved into Apartment
No. 1, residing there for the first seven years
of their marriage before moving to a larger apartment
building in 1932. After a history of tenants moving
in and out, developers' purchasing and planning
to demolish the house, and two attempts to destroy
the house by arsonists in the mid-1990's, the restored
house opened to the public in 1997. There, docents
guide visitors through the house and the apartment
to learn of Mitchell's life in Atlanta, of facts
surrounding her writing the novel, and of how the
book advanced toward publication in
North America and in non-Anglophone countries.
In 1999, the
Margaret Mitchell House acquired a nearby empty building
that once housed a branch of a local bank. That building
is now the movie museum. Several collectors of "GWTW"
movie memorabilia have donated parts of their collections
for display in the new museum. Among these artifacts
are photos taken during the movie's 1939 premiere
in Atlanta; the front door to the Hollywood movie
set of the O'Hara home, Tara; and, recognizable to
the movie's aficionados, the portrait of Scarlett
O'Hara from the Butler Mansion.
The Margaret
Mitchell House and Museum operates under the aegis
of the Atlanta History Center in Atlanta, Georgia.
