CANDLER MANSIONAtlanta’s

One of the South’s most beautiful and historic homes, Asa G. Candler, Jr.’s Briarcliff Estate is now shuttered and slowly falling apart.

“‘Whatever happens, the fables of the land on which Asa G. Candler, Jr. built his palatial estate will never grow dim. They were too much a part of the city for that.”’

arren A. Candler, Methodist Bishop and President of

Emory College, once wrote, “The invariable outcome of an era of luxury is the profanation and pollution of the home. Luxury engenders all forms of self-indulgence, which suffocate the noblest affections and smother the purest joys.”

Yet within two decades, Warren’s nephew, Asa G. Candler, Jr., son of the much-lauded businessman who began The Coca-Cola Company, would create an estate nearly unrivalled in its luxuriance. On a 43-acre plot on Briarcliff road, Candler would create an enormous mansion with more than forty rooms, two pools, a greenhouse, and one of the finest private zoos in the country. Although the home was once one of the South’s most beautiful, it is now lies unused and crumbling. Its paint is peeling, its windows cracked, but, as the Atlanta Journal wrote a half-century ago, “Whatever happens, the fables of the land on which Asa G. Candler, Jr. built his palatial estate will never grow dim. They were too much a part of the city for that.”

sa Griggs Candler, Jr. acquired his father’s business acumen

from an early age—he once listed his

occupation as “Capitalist” on a form filed with Emory University, where he attended school while his uncle Warren was president. He began his professional career under his father at The Coca-Cola Company, rising through the ranks to become a Vice President of the firm.

Yet as he came into his own, Candler left Coca-Cola to found the Briarcliff Investment Company, and interested himself primarily amassing a real estate empire. At one point, Candler owned more than thirty buildings throughout the city,

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including hotels, apartments, and offices. Among his notable properties was the Briarcliff Hotel, at the corner of Ponce de Leon Avenue and North Highland Avenue. But Candler was known as much for his personal life as he was for his business exploits. He was a yachtsman, an avid aviation enthusiast, and big game hunter, and rubbed shoulders with America’s elite.

r. Candler built his family home on Briarcliff Road

in 1920, and it quickly became host to all the luxury and self-indulgence that his uncle had decried. As the Atlanta Journal wrote in 1952, “A new mode

of Atlanta life—something different, something spectacular—was founded on the once-lush Candler property.” The frequent guests to the house were a who’s-who of prominent Atlantans, and there was often dancing late into the night in the third floor ballroom.

But nothing about the estate could compare to Candler’s zoo.

On an otherwise ordinary day in April of 1932, the entire Druid Hills neighborhood was in disarray as $50,000 worth of exotic animals was unloaded at the Candler estate. The animals, accumulated by Mr. Candler throughout his travels, were brought to the train station at Emory

Asa G. Candler, Jr. was the proud owner of Georgia’s first private plane. A local news-paper wrote of the Candlers’ jetsetting lifestyle: “After completing a non-stop flight in his

Lockheed Vega wasp plane from Candler Field, Atlanta, to Newark Airport, 800 miles, in less than five hours, Monday, Asa A. G. Candler radioed Bobby Jones at high sea,

inviting the golf champion and his wife to go to the Minneapolis Open tournament in the Candler ship.”

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“‘A new mode of Atlanta life—something different, something

spectacular—was founded on the once-lush Candler property.”’

University, then loaded onto trucks for the remaining two miles of the journey.

Newspapers had a field day covering the arrival of so many animals. One periodical counted, “Six elephants. One Bengal tiger. Four lions. One black leopard. Three spotted leopards. Two Canadian lynx. Two polar bears. Four Himalayan bears. Sixty-three monkeys, one puma, one American black bear, one Russian brown bar, one camel, two zebras, two ostriches, two nildau, four American buffalo, two axis deer, two fallow deer, two American elks, nine ponies, 300 assorted birds, seven sea lions and six alligators.” Once the animals had been safely brought inside, the zoo was opened to the public, along with one of the estate’s pools, during certain hours on Tuesdays and Fridays.

The zoo’s most famous residents were the elephants, but they were also the most difficult to unload at the estate. Trainers said that “perhaps the pachyderm’s

memory of five seasick days and nights aboard a boat beset by storms in the Atlantic had left an aversion for

gangplanks and their ilk.” Candler named four of them ‘Coca,’ ‘Cola,’ ‘Delicious,’ and ‘Refreshing,’ and

they were all good-natured and well trained. On one occasion, Candler even strapped a harness to one and

used him to plow the estate’s garden.

he zoo, however, soon began to create considerable

headaches for its owner. In 1934, a twenty-three year old man named John Lee Butler tried to extort $1,000 from Mr. Candler under threat of killing all of his animals. Butler left a handwritten note on plain white paper: “Dear Candler: I need $1,000 for three months for a girl friend who is very sick. I will pay you $500 interest. Keep quiet about this. Leave the money under the last seat on the left on the back row of the West End theater. I am not bluffing. If you don’t do this I will kill all the animals in your zoo to show I am not bluffing. Keep quiet about this thing.” Butler was promptly arrested when he tried to retrieve the money—but that was far from the last

of Candler’s zoo troubles.The curator of the zoo, in an

interview, stated that, “The Candler zoo has safety features more effective than those used in any other zoo in the country. We have constructed the buildings in such a manner that escape is impossible.” Nevertheless, the Georgia Court of Appeals ordered Candler to pay $10,000 in damages to a neighbor who charged that a baboon jumped over the wall of the zoo and devoured $60 in currency out of her purse. Not long after, neighbors again sued, seeking damages for the odor emanating from the zoo and the unsanitary conditions therein, and alleging that the peace and quiet of the Briarcliff residential section had been disturbed by “the roaring of lions,

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trumpeting of elephants, screeching of baboons, chattering of monkeys, etc. etc.”

By 1935, Candler had decided to donate his menagerie to the city of Atlanta. Newspapers at the time wrote, “Mr. Candler’s collection is known to be among the finest private zoos in America. With the addition of these residents, Atlanta’s zoo will rank with any except a very few in the nation, and become a civic asset of incalculable educational value.”

n 1949, Candler sold his Briarcliff Estate to the

General Services Administration, which paid $250,000 for the property. The Administration had originally planned to convert the land into a Veterans Hospital. But after the Army turned the Oliver General Hospital over to the VA, the Veterans Administration declared that the Briarcliff Estate was in “excess to its needs and responsibilities.” A proposal later emerged to use the manor to create the state’s first alcohol treatment facility—appropriate given Candler’s own lifelong struggles with alcoholism. Although many were opposed to the move, given what a gorgeous and historic property it was,

the Briarcliff Estate was turned into the Georgia Clinic, later known as the Dekalb County Addiction Center.

In September of 1998, the state of Georgia deeded the property to Emory University for a total of $2.9 million. Administrators originally estimated, due to the extreme disrepair that the mansion had fallen into, that it would cost $28 million to renovate the property—subsequent estimates have shot up to an astronomical $90 million. Although the property is designated as a National Historic Site, it remains unoccupied, unused, and completely decrepit. Perhaps one day this crumbling property will be restored to its former beauty.

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Note: The Briarcliff Estate is NOT open to the public. Please contact Emory University Facilities Management to request a tour.