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The Tudor Domestic Gothic building above is the Stonehenge Mansion near the corner of Oakdale and Ponce de Leon in eastern Atlanta, Georgia. It was built by the Venable family in 1914. The architect was Edward Bennett Dougherty. The mansion is now part of St. John's Lutheran Church. Samuel Hoyt Venable and William Venable owned the Southern Granite Company, which owned Stone Mountain, Arabia Mountain, and Pine Mountain in Georgia. The mansion was therefore built of granite from Stone Mountain, which is about twelve miles to the east. Stone Mountain granite is a gray granite (see below), and among its hallmarks are clusters of dark tourmaline (see smaller image farther below). |
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| Stone Mountain is a prominent rounded hill of granite amidst the otherwise gently rolling landscape east of Altanta (see below). It is one of several bodies of granite intruded into the Piedmont about 300 million years ago, as the African margin of Gondwana and the southeast margin of Laurentia (ancestral North America) collided to form the southern Appalachians. Erosion has removed the surrounding metamorphic rocks into which the Stone Mountain granite was intruded, leaving the form of the pluton exposed. A hiking trail climbs to its top, and a cable car provides access as well. |
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Acknowledgements: The information about the Venable family and Stonehenge mansion above comes from a St, John's Lutheran Church webpage. That webpage provides much more information about the mansion, and images of its interior.
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