Longtime Peachtree

City architect Jim Strickland and his company, Historical Concepts, were

recently honored by Southern Living magazine for the design of a Greek

Revival house in South Carolina.

The house on

Spring Island, near Beaufort, was recognized with a 2001 Southern Home

Award in the magazine's February issue. The design was praised for combining

historical detail with modern lifestyle accommodation, according to one

of the judges.

This is not

the first time a national publication has spotlighted the work of Historical

Concepts, which has been in business in Peachtree City since 1982. Strickland

moved to town in 1975 and originally operated a firm that also was in

the building business, but design and architecture are what he loves the

most and he has specialized in those areas with Historical Concepts.

His firm, which

has a staff of 21, literally works on projects across the United States,

going as far as California. A great deal of their work is in South Carolina

and Florida, as well as North Carolina, Virginia and Georgia.

Historical

Concepts does not simply houses, however. The company creates themes for

entire communities an "architectural language," as Strickland

likes to call it.

His was one

of five firms selected by Disney in the 1990s to come up with the plan

for Celebration, a master-planned community in Florida near the other

major Disney sites.

Seaside, another

community built in past ten years that was featured in the Jim Carrey

film "The Truman Show," also bears the Historical Concepts stamp.

Much of the

company's present work is at Spring Island, site of the award-winning

home mentioned above. It is being developed under a trust that will encourage

low density, meaning a few hundred residents on an island of a few thousand

acres, Strickland said.

Many of Historical

Concepts' clients in these areas live in the northeastern United States,

and word-of-mouth over the years has built to the point where some clients

are now willing to wait six or seven months until Strickland's firm can

get to their projects.

He has also

done a considerable amount of work in Peachtree City, including North

Cove and St. Andrews Square. Strickland himself spent 11 years on the

city's Planning Commission in the late 1970s and through most of the 1980s.

"Peachtree City has been good to us," he said.

Motorists driving

south out of the small Fayette town of Brooks can see another example

of his company's work a giant English Tudor-style home on each side of

the road. What made that even more unusual, Strickland said, was the fact

that the owner of one of the homes was in her eighties when she commissioned

them to undertake the project.

After several

years of crisscrossing the country to oversee all of these projects, Strickland

is now passing more of those duties down to his staff, which is jokes

consists of "all young turks except me." He now looks forward

to spending more time in the office doing actual design work.

Historical

Concepts is located on Prime Point in Peachtree City, behind the Dairy

Queen and across from the McIntosh High School athletic fields. Their

phone number is 770-487-8041.