Swan House Standing

Lyrics

[Intro]
You stand on Andrews Drive.
Cold to the touch, even in a Georgia June.
Memory keeper.

[Verse 1]
Philip Trammell Shutze drew your bones in 1925.
Edward and Emily Inman gave you a name, paid in cotton money.
By 1928, the air inside smelled of wet plaster and fresh-cut pine.
They filled your halls with debutante laughter, the rustle of silk against the grand staircase.
A promise of permanence carved in stone.

[Verse 2]
I read about the swan they kept for one season.
A real, living thing in a marble basin in the foyer.
Just beating its wings against the perfect, quiet walls.
Tearing the silk. You can't contain that kind of life.
They took it away. Left you with just the name.

[Chorus]
And you just stood there. Swan House standing.
While the old Roxy Theatre went dark down on Roswell Road.
While the neon burned holes in the night at Tongue & Groove, at Chaos.
You held the quiet. You kept the decades in your marble skin.
You just waited for the noise to die.

[Verse 3]
Down Peachtree, the Cathedral of St. Philip raised its Indiana limestone in 1962.
Another keeper of another kind of vow.
For years, you were just ghosts on the edge of the party.
The old world nobody wanted, while the bass from the Village shook your windowpanes.
You were just waiting.

[Bridge]
Under your foundations, the old trade routes sleep.
The Mvskoke path is still there, under the asphalt.
Your weight is just the latest stone placed on a long, long road.
Just another layer of memory.

[Outro]
Now the neon is gone, too.
Replaced by corporate glass and a different kind of quiet.
And you're still here.
Swan House standing.
Watching.
Holding the silence after the party is over.