Skip to main content

Druid Hills High School

Dekalb County Schools

Registration
Infinite Campus

Neil Reid Homes

Druid Hills Homes by Joseph Neel Reid

According to family legend, Neel Reid’s career in architecture began when he took a strong interest in the family home that was being remodeled by an architect in Macon. His ideas so impressed the architect that he was offered a job. He went on to study architecture at Columbia University and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris where he studied classic and Renaissance architecture. In 1909, the firm Hentz and Reid was formed as Hal Hentz and Neel Reid entered a partnership. In 1915, the firm's name changed to Hentz, Reid And Adler.
Reid designed a number of the early homes in the Druid Hills neighborhood. Reid’s eclecticism fit the nostalgic yearning that Atlanta felt for the past after the Civil War and Reconstruction. As a creative, gifted, and intuitive architect, Reid experimented with various styles in designing homes. Designing before air conditioning, Reid’s designs always included porches as integral parts of the house. Reid also liked to emphasize entrance doorways, entrance hallways, and stair hallways by giving them greater dimensions. In his larger homes, the open staircases are often the dramatic element. In his smaller houses, Reid created a sense of presence through the use of a variety of interesting elements or space such as partly open levels, a unique chimney, or oversized columns to achieve the effect he wanted. Neel Reid died in 1926.

1444 Fairview Road
1372 Fairview Road (Tudor adaptation)

1348 Fairview Road
(designed in a French-manor style)

1436 Fairview Road
(American Georgian house)

(American Georgian style)
850 Oakdale Road
(17th century French)

888 Oakdale Road
(Georgian architecture style)

1341 Ponce de Leon Avenue
(17th century English adaptation)
848 Springdale Road
(Italian-manor style)