Get more information on Group Tours of the Margaret Mitchell House

Find more historic houses at the Atlanta History Center

When in Atlanta, Take a Tour of the
Margaret Mitchell House & Museum

The docent-led tour is a 60 to 90-minute experience with exclusive photographs and archival exhibits that tell the story of Margaret Mitchell beyond Gone With the Wind. The tour starts in our Visitors Center with "Before Scarlett: Girlhood Writings of Margaret Mitchell, 1907-1918." The tour continues into the house, through her apartment where she wrote Gone With the Wind, and finally to the Gone With the Wind Movie Museum.

The museum illuminates the making of the movie through original objects, correspondence, and artifacts such as the legendary doorway to Tara.  Your experience at our historic site ends with an opportunity to enjoy the Museum Shop, complete with unique gifts, souvenirs, and Gone With the Wind collectibles and memorabilia.

Click here for tour hours, and a map and directions to the house.

The Visitor Experience

The Margaret Mitchell House Visitors Center

The Visitors Center, located adjacent to the house on the corner of Peachtree Street and Peachtree Place, is the main entrance and the beginning of the tour. The 4,000 square foot facility houses admissions, a small theater, and a visual arts exhibit gallery.

After the second fire in May 1996, Daimler-Benz offered a challenge grant to renovate the Visitors Center and provide a facility to temporarily house exhibits for visitors during the Olympic Games and before the completion of the house. With additional support from the business and hospitality community, the Visitors Center opened temporarily in July 1996.

The House and Its History

Built in 1899 by Cornelius J. Sheehan, the two-story, single-family home on fashionable Peachtree Street was converted in 1919 into a 10-unit apartment building. It was here, from 1925 until 1932, that Margaret Mitchell lived in Apartment #1 and wrote her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Gone With the Wind.

Apartment #1

When Margaret Mitchell and her husband, John Marsh, moved into the house in 1925, the building was known as the Crescent Apartments. Apartment #1 is the only interior space of the restored house that is preserved as an apartment. Architectural features include the famous leaded glass window out of which Mitchell looked while writing the book, and tile in the foyer of her apartment. All furnishings are of the period.

Exhibits

Round Robin Letters on display

This exhibition features never-seen-before letters written by Margaret Mitchell and her husband, John, to his family in Kentucky and across the United States. The letters document the couple's lives after the publication of the book in 1936 and prior to the movie premiere in 1939. This exhibit reveals the human side of Margaret Mitchell in intimate correspondence shared among family members when letter writing was in vogue. You'll discover how dramatically their life was changed by Gone With the Wind. The letters also illustrate that Mitchell was quite a prolific writer and wrote letters with the frequency that we send emails today. The collection is newly acquired by the University of Georgia Hargrett Library.

KING: Martin Luther King, Jr. in Black and White

Almost thirty of Bob Adelman's photographs, also featured in KING: The Photobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. published by Viking, are currently displayed on the first floor of the Margaret Mitchell House.

"I'm surprised that of all that pain, some beauty came."   --King, after studying one of Adelman's Birmingham water-hose photographs. In the spirit of Mitchell's work as a philanthropist and humanitarian in the years following Gone With the Wind, we are pleased to present this exhibit of Bob Adelman's photographs in celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr. "From King's role on stage as a ten year old, singing Negro spirituals with the Ebenezer Baptist Church Choir at the Gone With the Wind Premiere Ball, King would eventually earn a Doctorate of Divinity and return to the stage to lead a revolution," says Mary Rose Taylor, executive director emeritus of the Margaret Mitchell House.

Front cover image of KING:  The Photobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Gone With The Wind Movie Museum

The Gone With the Wind Movie Museum opened on December 15, 1999, the 60th anniversary of the movie premiere in Atlanta. Major attractions include the front door of the legendary Tara plantation from the movie set and the portrait of Scarlett from the Butler house. The portrait still bears a liquor stain from a drink Clark Gable's Rhett Butler threw at it.

Revamped in early 2006, the museum welcomes visitors to retrace the path that Margaret Mitchell’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel traveled—from Atlanta, to publication in New York, and then to Hollywood for its transformation onto the silver screen. Festivities surrounding the movie’s grand premiere in Atlanta on December 15, 1939, are recounted through objects, photographs, and vintage newsreel footage.  Original materials on display include four dazzling watercolor “storyboards” from Selznick’s film studio’s art department created to choreograph movie scenes and costume sketches by Walter Plunkett.  The exhibition features Margaret Mitchell’s quotes and original correspondence dating from 1938-9 revealing her keen desire that her book be accurately portrayed on the silver screen.

Museum Gift Shop

Margaret Mitchell House and Museum Gift Shop boasts a wide variety of collectors items and one of a kind treasures including GWTW-inspired figurines from the San Francisco Music Box Company and Polonaise holiday ornaments of Scarlett, Rhett, Ashley and other legendary characters. The Shop showcases an array of timeless collectible plates, dolls, GWTW dress patterns and recipe books perfect for holiday gift-giving! Call (404) 249-7117 for product information.

photographs copyright Philip Spears, 2001