Asa Candler: The Coca-Cola Mansion

Lyrics

[Intro]
Ten thirty-two Euclid.
Are you still here?
I walk by the new bricks, the divided lot.
But I feel the shade from your phantom turret.
I'm listening for you.

[Verse 1]
Asa Griggs Candler laid your foundation.
Not with mortar, not with stone.
But with a pharmacist's ledger from eighteen eighty-eight.
A secret formula bought for twenty-three hundred dollars.
Each gingerbread gable, each pane of stained glass...
paid for by the barrel.
Dark, sweet syrup, shipped out from Atlanta.
Building this monument to a single taste.

[Chorus]
Oh, the house that fizz built.
Ten thirty-two Euclid Avenue.
Mahogany and money, sleeping while it grew.
The air thick with beeswax and the promise of a dividend.
A fortune bubbling up from a fountain pen.
The sweet, dark secret in your bones.

[Verse 2]
I imagine Lucy Elizabeth in the parlor.
The afternoon sun slanting through the bay windows.
Does the whole house hum?
A low, electric thrum of commerce and capital.
Can she smell the caramel and caffeine in the velvet drapes?
He owes it all to God, his wife... and Coca-Cola.
And this house, this house is the testament.
The quiet center of a thirsty world.

[Bridge]
Then, nineteen nineteen.
The rustle of a twenty-five-million-dollar signature.
The family moves on to Druid Hills, to grander things.
And you were left behind.
A gilded shell on a street that was forgetting.
The paint began to peel.
The wrecking ball didn't know your name.
Just a plot of land to be cleared.

[Chorus]
Oh, the house that fizz built.
Ten thirty-two Euclid Avenue.
Mahogany and money, sleeping while it grew.
The air thick with beeswax and the promise of a dividend.
A fortune bubbling up from a fountain pen.
The sweet, dark secret... now just bones.

[Outro]
Just a number on a curb.
Ten thirty-two.
But sometimes, on a hot day...
I can almost taste it in the air.