RENAISSANCE in the PINK

In Atlanta, Philip Trammell Shutze's famed Pink Palace returns to glory with a careful reclaiming of the architect's Venetian chapel-inspired vision.

- STEPHEN WALLIS

"There's nothing prettier than Atlanta in the spring," declares interior designer Melanie Turner, who has lived in the city for 45 years. She points to the area of Buckhead around West Paces Ferry Road, where from March to May, glorious blooming dogwoods, azaleas, and redbuds enliven the grounds of some of the city's most spectacular and historic residences. "It's just one home after the next that is grand and beautiful," she says.

One of the neighborhood's best-known and most distinctive residences is a Venetian-style head-turner nicknamed the Pink Palace, owing to its blush-toned stucco facade embellished with winged cherubs, scrolls, shell forms, and other architectural details. Completed in 1926 the house is credited to one of Atlanta's leading neoclassical architects of the day, Philip Trammell Shutze, who worked closely with Neel Reid at the firm then known as Hentz, Reid & Adler.

When the Pink Palace was on the market several years ago, Turner encouraged Thierry François to give it a serious look. After all François and his wife, Shannon, had expressed admiration for her house, another Shutze creation a mile or so down the road. A pastiche of 16th- and 17th-century Italian villas also with a pink-stucco exterior, it's notably dubbed the Pink Castle and considered a sister home to the Palace.

"They're both peacocks," says Turner, who notes that the similarities have occasionally caused confusion. "When one of us has a party, people will mistakenly show up at my house or show up at that house because they get them mixed up."