As I began my research into these photographs, I became interested in a white frame structure on Decatur Street standing to the east of the Masonic Hall. The building is visible in two of Barnard's stereographs: one focusing on the Atlanta Intelligencer building on Whitehall, and the other shot directly up Decatur Street into Five Points. There seemed to be lettering on the pediment of the structure, and when I enhanced the photograph using common Photoshop techniques it seemed clear that the word "Empire" appears in large letters, arcing over the word "House."

This, then, I concluded was the Empire House hotel, one of at least five hotels in Atlanta which had been converted into general hospitals by the Confederate Army.

But as I did more research into the matter, a problem developed. Every single contemporary description of the Empire House places it on Whitehall Street - not Decatur Street. With that evidence balanced against the photographic evidence ... well, it is a real mystery as to what exactly the picture shows.

Let's take a look at the evidence against The Empire House being located on Decatur Street.

There is at least one direct description of the Empire House given by someone who lived in Atlanta during the war and knew the building before the conflict. Sarah Conley Clayton was a girl during these times and lived in the Angier House on Washington Street, directly across from Atlanta City Hall and the Richard Lyon's House, future HQ of Gen. Sherman. Her memoirs have been expertly annotated by Dr. Robert Scott Davis of Wallace State College in his book "Requiem For a Lost City: A Memoir of Civil War Atlanta and the Old South." On Page 110 of that book, Miss Clayton is discussing a visit her parents made to the Empire House hospital to see if they could find someone to take into their home. They discover an officer Dr. Davis identifies as Capt. Thomas Sharp, 10th Mississippi. Of him, Miss Clayton writes:

"Captain Sharp had been taken to the Empire House on Whitehall Street, where we had frequently visited friends in the hotel days, and where once or twice at night we kept tally on the watchman, across the Street ..."

That places the hotel/hospital on Whitehall Street. Next, we turn to an article in the March 1884-February 1886 issue of The Atlanta Medical and Surgical Journal, which discusses the general hospitals Confederate surgeons had established in various cities in Georgia, including Atlanta. Among them, the ""Empire Hospital, for 250 patients, Dr.W.P. Hardin in charge." The author, Sidney Herbert, tells us there is "but little on record" of the hospital, except that " 'The "Empire" was in the old "Empire block" on Whitehall street, between Hunter and Mitchell streets."

Now we can place the hospital within a single block of Whitehall Street and within a specific commercial building. It turns out that commercial building is mentioned in a New York Times article of Nov. 8, 1866, although it misplaces the city where the building was located in both its dateline and the headline: "Fire at Augusta, Ga." The article reads, in its entirety: "The Atlanta Empire block owned by William Markham, containing six large stores, was destroyed by fire yesterday."

.During the war, city sexton G.A. Pilgrim kept a record of Confederate soldiers who died at the various military hospitals and who were subsequently buried - temporarily or permanently - within the city's cemetery. Pilgrim's record of former Empire House/Hospital patients began on March 3, 1862 and ended, abruptly, on July 5, 1864 when the sexton apparently decided the oncoming Federal armies would bring him too much business. Pilgrim's original records were lost after the war, but fortunately they were transcribed in August August 1884 by an Elizabeth A. Fry. (PDF).

At the end of the four-page record of Empire House/Hospital burials, Ms. Fry has written the following endnote:

"The Empire House was situated on Whitehall Street, where McNaught & Scrutchin's Hardware Store now stands."

That's pretty definite. And an advertisement for McNaught & Scrutchin in the Sept. 18, 1874 edition of the Atlanta Constitution states this "importer of hardware, cutlery and guns" was then located at 86 Whitehall Street. That ad appeared 10 years before Mrs. Fry made her notation in the burial record. There is a Sanborn Fire Insurance map available for Atlanta for the year 1886, two years afterward. It shows 86 Whitehall Street as being on the east side of Whitehall, almost exactly between Hunter and Mitchell streets.

So we have all that evidence against what appears to be clear photographic evidence that The Empire House was located on Decatur Street. I invite anyone who wishes to take the high resolution images available from the Library of

Congress and repeat my Photoshop experiments and see if they can come to different conclusions than the sign over the pediment reads "Empire House."

There is this possibility, however: if the Empire House was

House was located in the Empire Block, that means it was owned by William Markham, the pro-unionist, peripatetic entrepreneur who was, above all things, pro-Markham. Knowing that overcrowded Atlanta was as in much need for hotel space as hospital space in 1864, might he have established a new "Empire House" on Decatur Street? Perhaps - but Dr. Davis, author of "Requiem For a Lost City," expressed doubts in private correspondence, pointing out that Confederate Provost Marshal G.W. Lee had a tremendous animosity toward Markham and was interested in helping Confederate authorities take over every available space for Army use.

Thus we have a plain mystery on our hands. If this is not the Empire House, what "Empire House" is it?