{"nrhp_refnum":"85000935","name":"Gentry, William T., House","other_names":[],"category":"building","location":{"address":"132 E. Lake Dr., SE","address_restricted":false,"city":"Atlanta","county":"DeKalb County","state":"GA","lat":33.74833995500006,"lon":-84.30114996399999,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1985-05-02","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Community Planning and Development","Architecture","Communications"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A large two-story Neoclassical yellow-brick house with a basement at 132 East Lake Drive, SE, in the East Lake neighborhood of Atlanta, DeKalb County, Georgia, built 1913-1914 and designed by P. Thornton Marye.","why_significant":"The house is a fine Neoclassical example built as an almost exact replica of an antebellum Greek Revival mansion, and it is a work of architect P. Thornton Marye. It is tied to William T. Gentry, president of Southern Bell Telephone Company, and to communications history. It also encouraged development of the East Lake neighborhood, where publicity photographs of it promoted the area in 1914.","narrative":"Built in 1913-1914 on a slight hill in East Lake, then a separate town and now part of Atlanta, this yellow-brick Neoclassical house has a full-width pedimented portico with four wooden Doric columns, French doors, a central hall plan, heart pine floors with mahogany inlay, and dark oak paneling. Architect P. Thornton Marye, who came to Atlanta in 1904 to design Terminal Station and is best known for the Fox Theater, designed it as an almost exact replica of an antebellum Greek Revival mansion. It was built for William T. Gentry, a Virginia native who rose to president of Southern Bell Telephone Company and held patents including the automatic coin device on pay telephones. His move to East Lake was seen as a major draw for other businessmen, and pictures of the house appeared in 1914 newspaper promotions of the area. Later owners divided the house into eight apartments by 1965, and restoration to a single-family home began in 1976.","period_of_significance":"1913-1914","architect_builder":"P. Thornton Marye","architectural_style":"Neoclassical","criteria":["B","C"],"status_note":"Occupied as a private residence; converted into eight apartments in the 1960s and being restored to a single-family home at the time of the form.","vacant_flag":false,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:55:42.634341-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/lz/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_GA/85000935.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/85000935/9bf54f43e9-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/85000935/9bf54f43e9-1600.webp","licence":"CC BY-SA 3.0","author":"Brogers784","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:William_T._Gentry_House.jpg\" rel=\"noopener\">Brogers784</a>, <a href=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0\" rel=\"license noopener\">CC BY-SA 3.0</a>, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:William_T._Gentry_House.jpg"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/93207779","wikipedia":null,"wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q134296035"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/georgia/dekalb-county/gentry-william-t-house-85000935/"}