Saving Architectural Treasures

In the film version of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind, after Atlanta has been burned and Scarlett O’Hara is fleeing to Tara, there is a scene where she arrives at neighboring Twelve Oaks Plantation to find it burned by Yankee troops and in ruins. The mansion’s once-grand double staircase is open to the night sky, and a cow appears wandering around in a space that had been a formal hall.

Afraid that she will find the same destruction when she arrives at home, Scarlett is overjoyed when...