Margaret T. McGehee, A Plague of Bulldozers: Celestine Sibley and Suburban Sprawl; Southern Spaces

Celestine Sibley died in 1999 at her beach retreat on Dog Island, Florida, which she built with her second husband, Jack Strong. In the four years prior to her death, she had had several setbacks to her health, including breast cancer in 1995, for which she had a mastectomy and chemotherapy, and a heart attack in 1997. In 1998, she was told that the cancer had spread throughout her body and into her bones.51 The day following her death, a cartoon by the AJC's political cartoonist Mike Luckovich appeared in the paper, showing a tall, somewhat disheveled woman in a baggy sweater and skirt standing at the pearly gates. Gatekeeper St. Peter says to his assistant, "Wait 'til Celestine sees the cabin we built for her…."52 For her readers, Sweet Apple had been a rural place beyond the bustling city of Atlanta where they could travel in their imaginations; for Sibley, it had always been her place of refuge, her heaven, the home she clung to even as the bulldozers of urban sprawl groaned close to her backyard.

Celestine Sibley at Sweet Apple, ca. 1970s

On an aerial map of contemporary Sweet Apple, you can't miss the expansive roofs of the houses (and the azure spots of their backyard pools) located around her home. In the area surrounding her cabin sprawl numerous developments and high-end subdivisions not unlike Shining Waters, with names like Litchfield Hundred, Lakeside at Ansley, Overlook at Litchfield, and King Estates Manor. Litchfield Hundred's website describes it as "a private swim/tennis community" with "nearly 200 homes on acre-plus lots."53 According to a realtor's website, Litchfield Hundred's homes were built between 1986 and 2006, suggesting that this development may have served as inspiration for the imagined Shining Waters subdivision in Sibley's mystery novels.54 One entrance to this "community" is located adjacent to the road on which Sweet Apple sits, about a hundred yards from the cabin's mailbox. But the development spans the area around Sibley's former home, with a second entrance about a mile east on the principal thoroughfare of Cox Road. Half a mile down Lackey Road from Sweet Apple is the not-yet-completed, gated community of Overlook at Litchfield, a development whose sign advertises homes in the $900,000s; its website claims that many of these "large, executive residences" were built by builders "who made Lakeside at Ansley so popular."55 King Estates Manor, as of June 10, 2008, offers homes on one-plus acres priced at $1,599,000 (5 bedrooms, 7 bathrooms) and $3.4 million (6 bedrooms, 10 bathrooms).56 Lakeside at Ansley's online "tour" includes marketing photos of an ethnically diverse population enjoying life in their subdivision, suggesting that even if that diversity is not present, it can at least be imagined for that subdivision — and perhaps more broadly for the region.57

Aerial map of area around Sweet Apple, 2002
(Sweet Apple cabin marked by red dot)

Bulldozers, piles of dirt, and massive houses have filled in this landscape, with Sibley's cabin and a few small neighboring houses the final holdouts to the surrounding, gigantic developments. Owned by Sibley's family, with her daughter Susan and son-in-law Edward Bazemore living there half the year, the sturdy cabin remains, for now, planted among the trees as "the developers still swarm around like vultures" (to quote Mrs. Bazemore), less than a mile away. One cannot help but wonder what will become of Sibley's home. Will it remain a part-time residence for her family in the decades to come? Will it evolve into an historic home and tourist site that reminds visitors of "the way things used to be," similar to Joel Chandler Harris's Wren's Nest in Atlanta's West End? Will Sweet Apple continue to be surrounded by residential and commercial developments? In the current economic downturn, as residential developments are put on hold across the United States, Sweet Apple seems safe from intrusion. But the bulldozer will no doubt rise again.

Suburban Development: Roswell, Georgia 2008 (1:27 min.)
A short film by Mary Battle, 2008.

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