My father had the practice of always reading almost all of the want ads in the Sunday newspaper. He felt it was his way of knowing what was going on in the economy in terms of what people were buying and people were selling.
One of the things he was looking for was his own place in the country
Ad from Atlanta Constitution July 27, 1941
At the listed address, Dad and Lou Bressler drove the car across a dirt dam and along a dirt road all the way to the end of a turn around. It was 40 acres of land, a seven acre lake and absolutely nothing built on it except the road. After traversing the road and walking down to see the lake, Dad called the realtor and ask him only one question. And the question was, “Is all the road on the land that's for sale?” When he got an affirmative answer, Dad told the realtor “I'll take it!” After he did that, Dad turned to Lou Bressler and said to Lou, “I'm going to buy it. Do you want to buy half of it with me?” Again, there was the affable agreement.
That was during the War and it seemed that the owner of the land was an officer in the army. He was about to be shipped overseas. He wanted to clear up all his hard property interest in the Atlanta area before he went off to war, And that's how Dad acquired his half interest in the Briarcliff property.
Portion of a 1945 map of Dekalb county. Red circles are possible Civil War sites.
At some point, Dad annd Lou Bressler had the property surveyed and laid out four adjacent lots on the lake along the dirt road that went over the dam and bordered right on the lake. At that point, the surveyors laid out the lots. And Dad turned to Lou Bressler and said “Okay, Lou, I'll take two lots and you take two lots. Which ones do you want?” The rest of the land was still unsurveyed and not laid out in terms of property lots. Mr.Bressler took the two lots that were closest to Briarcliff road, and Dad took the other two.
The Lake on Briarcliff (photo from 2009)
During and after the War, we would go out to the Briarcliff Road lake sometimes on weekends, and just picnic out there because there was nothing on the lake. At some point, after the war. Dad had a dock constructed using barrels that he got from his son-in-law, Bernie Smith, who owned a barrel company. And so we had a dock that we could swim off of, but there was nothing else on the property.
After the War, Dad wanted to have a permanent house out there, on Briarcliff Road. However, because of rationing after the war, it was impossible to get building supplies or hire anyone to do the construction work.
That's not going to stop Sol Yudelson! The army was breaking up the large Lawson General Hospital for veterans and soldiers. Lawson General Hospital, which is the present location of the DeKalb County Airport. (Editor's note: On the map above, it is straight up Shallowford Road) It was announced that that veterans would be able to buy the buildings that were on the hospital grounds. But everything was cash and you had to get the building off of the property within a very short period of time as it was being totally dismantled.
So Dad went out with Harold, and I believe Bernie, but I'm not so sure about that. And they bid on and bought a building that had been used as a post exchange. It was 90 feet long and 25 feet wide. The building had been divided into three areas. One area was a beauty parlor for the nurses. One area was a tailor shop and I forget what the third area was. I was only seven at the time.
The building itself was an empty rectangular box; 90 feet long by 25 feet wide. There was a porch on one side and there were three big double doors for the amputees to get in on that side to each of the three parts of the building. The building was up on probably two foot brick pillars, asbestos siding, one long continuous building.
And then the problem was how do you get something from the DeKalb County Airport to 3977 Briarcliff Road. Again, that's not a problem that's going to stop Sol Yudelson when he wants to get something done, he would get it done. Given the problem, Dad went into his file of people he could contact and contacted, I believes a man named was Mr. Scott. But that's open to doubt. His business was moving very large objects. Mr. Scott came out, looked at the building and said okay, where do you want it? Dad told him he wanted it on Briarcliff Road. So the first thing that had to be done was the building was cut in half because it was far too long to go around the many corners that would be required to get to Briarcliff Road. Once it was cut in half it was jacked up and loaded onto large steel rollers. The front end was attached to a truck to haul it all the way to Briarcliff road. There had to be a man sitting on top of the front part of the building to lift the telephone wires up over the building as it went drump, drump down the road.
When it finally got to Briarcliff road, they were able to somehow, and I don't know how, to get the now 45 foot by 25 foot box building across the dam up the little hill and into place on the far distant lot. Then they took the box or the house to be set up the pillars that they had taken from the hospital underneath the building. They had piled them up to provide a foundation when they slid the building down the hill, toward the lake from the dirt road using cables and who knows what else and there it sat. They simply repeated the same process and brought the second half of the of the building over to Briarcliff Road, slid it down the hill and left it in place. Patched the sliced roof and went away.
A 90 by 25 foot box, sitting on stacked up two foot brick pillars. The side toward the lake was probably 10 feet up in the air. And that was the side that had the three open doors that opened into the air . In order to get into the house, you had to scramble up a homemade wooden ladder of two by fours and one-by boards up 10 feet to get into the big open doorways. I still have a picture in my mind of my mother doing just that. They repaired the cut in the roof and there the building sat.
The house in 2022. The roof over the front door is a later addition.
Next problem. How do you turn a 90 by 25 foot box into a livable, most unusual, home on the lake ? Again that was not a major problem for Sol Yudelson. He had read an article somewhere at that time about unique homes being by an architect named Aeck Associates of Atlanta. Dad thought that he would be the one person needed to turn this box into a home. So he got in touch with Richard Aeck and told him the situation. Aeck came out and decided that would be a very fascinating challenge.
At the time of construction building supplies were still rationed and hard to obtain. Dad obtained the lumber, windows, etc through his friend Morris Solloway who was building the apartments that still stand on Briarcliff at the byway. They were among the first large apt complexes built in Atlanta after the war.
During the construction, Richard Aeck told Dad the he was working on a home in (I believe) North Carolina where they were cutting down a grove of American Chestnut trees. He asked if Dad wanted the lumber? Dad always loved fine wood said "Yes." He had the lumber cut and kiln dried and trucked to Atlanta. The paneling was still there in 2019. Some of the boards are 12 inched wide wormy chestnut.
Julian and BJ Yudelson lived in the house while they were going to Emory in 1963-64.
Shirley Yudelson Mosinger remembers that the third office in the building was a post office. She also remembers that Sol Yudelson left the original floor showing in the kitchen pantry so that any visitor could see the building's history.
Tony Aeck, son of the architect Richard Aeck, found a list of his father's commissions. The house for Sol and Anne Yudelson was Aeck Associates Job #156 in 1951.
There is more information about Lawson General Hospital online. Lawson
General Hospital was the site of the military buildings that included the
post exchange that became the Yudelson family home. This is a link to an
article that appeared in print in the Dunwoody Crier column, Past Tense:
Past Tense Georgia
There are pictures of the hospital and a discussion of WWII Military
hospitals here:
WW2 Military Hospitals, Zone of Interior
and a color postcard picture of the hospital here:
Atlanta Time Machine
Julian was concerned that the old cemetery near the back corner of the property didn't show on the map. He found it as a teenager exploring all over the back 40 acres. Peggy Mosinger Freedman found the Midway Baptist Church on a 1948 map of Dekalb County. When she followed up with the Dekalb County History Center, she found a listing for the Midway Baptist Cemetery located on Land Lot 209, Dist. 18. It is next to the Midway Baptist Church in a triangle formed by Henderson Mill Road and Briarcliff Road and the church near Northlake Mall.
Julian also remembers that the Medlocks owned the opposite side of the lake. They raised a few horses and had a daughter Louise who gave him a ride to Grady High the first year we live out there.
And Terry Yudelson Stetzner remembers the house from a child's perspective:
I remember chigger bites! And Grandma putting us in the bath tub and pouring something into the water (who knows what?) and us screaming like it hurt (which I don't think it did) and I think it was to calm the itch. I also remember her painting our bites with clear nail polish. Fond memories, right? I also remember really big family dinners at the long table. I remember Julian's room on the lower level where he made truly elaborate models - he was a teenager.
I remember my Dad taking us in the row boat around the lake to the mouth of the stream which entered into the lake - very pretty.
