The Inman Park Festival Tour of Homes has been running since 1972, making it Atlanta’s longest-running neighborhood festival. This year, one of its 10 stops is a first-timer: a modern home built in 1999 that neighbors call the Tree House, and that has never opened its doors for the tour. Co-owner Colin Sutter talked with WABE Arts about the house, the garden that nearly didn’t survive an Atlanta winter and what keeps two Chicagoans rooted in Inman Park.
A modern house in a historic neighborhood
The Tree House at 231 DeGress Avenue was built in the late 1990s, making it one of Inman Park’s few modern homes in a neighborhood defined by late-19th- and early-20th-century architecture. Its aluminum siding, angular design and four-story vertical footprint instantly set it apart, and Sutter is quick to note that that uniqueness wasn’t necessarily welcomed — at first.
“It stands out in the neighborhood because all the homes are, you know, early to mid-1900s,” Sutter said. “I know there are other homes in Inman Park that are modern. But, in the immediate area, they built our home, and it was the first and the last. They stopped the ordinance, … which I understand, because maybe they don’t want to take away the beauty of the older homes in the neighborhood.”
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