Story by Sarah Leonardo, Root Bound Media | Photos by Cedric Smith

An exhibition of generational prized possessions, a bike lane for scooters and Big Wheels, a backdrop for a family’s evolution… 

From the front double entry doors, a wide Center Hall leads directly through the heart of Michelle and Ethiel Garlington’s 1858 Folk Victorian home. 

The property’s architectural features – 12-foot-6-inch ceilings, wood wainscot details, original heart pine hardwood flooring, transom doors, and elegant fireplace mantels in nearly every room – quietly draw the present into the past. Michelle, a licensed interior designer with a master’s degree in historic preservation, is not the type to take this for granted. 

In 2014 Ethiel was offered the role of executive director for the Historic Macon Foundation. Although Michelle’s interior design career was gaining momentum in Knoxville, one weekend exploring Macon was all it took to convince the Garlingtons to relocate. The couple felt energized by the historic architecture and revitalization efforts taking shape in Downtown Macon. Inspired to participate in the action, they sought out an InTown neighborhood home and settled into a charming Tudor duplex. 

However, the Garlingtons quickly outgrew their upstairs apartment when their first child was born the following August. While washing dishes at the kitchen sink, Michelle found herself studying the gorgeous property next door. It was owned by fellow designer and preservation advocate C. Terry Holland. After several years carefully considering their growing family while reassuring Terry that they would tend to the house with as much love as he had, the Garlingtons acquired the home in 2017.

Fast forward almost a decade: Michelle walks her two children to school each day, recently hosted 478 Creatives for their second Insider’s Studio (alongside Emily Hopkins, the successor to Ethiel’s role at HMF), and has built a team for her Macon-based interior design studio, Camp Interiors. Before Camp had a dedicated office, the Garlington home served as a makeshift warehouse. “Cardboard corridors” of inventory lined the central hall and rooms, unintentionally offering the kids a source of adventure, creativity, and play. 

The Garlingtons’ lives seem full of these themes – creativity is woven into their DNA. There is no simpler expression of that pure imagination than in their youngest’s bedroom, where a mini trampoline, art supplies, works-in-progress, and a white board advertising refreshments for sale stake their claim.

Glow in the dark stars aren’t exactly the quintessential symbol of historic preservation, but they nonetheless provide a comforting sense of nostalgia, preserving the whimsy of childhood. An emerging young creative in her element, Michelle’s daughter wanted her stars on the ceiling. With the 12-foot-6-inch ceilings slightly out of reach… decorating her bed’s headcloth was the compromise. 

Amid the creative whirlwind, the bed feels stable, permanent, and well-crafted. The canopy bed was handmade by Michelle’s great-grandfather, for her grandmother. 

Just outside in the hall hangs a portrait of the girl that once slept in the same bed. It was painted by the subject’s own mother, Michelle’s great-grandmother. On the opposite wall, a preserved sailfish caught by her grandmother in the ‘80s dominates the wall, and in some inexplicable way feels perfectly at home. “It freaked me out so much as a kid that my grandfather would take it off the wall and store it, which I really think is funny,” Michelle told me. 

The adventure continues across the hall in their son’s room. Like his sister’s space, his room reflects his personality and interests. But instead of creative chaos, order reigns supreme. Sports trophies are organized in a case found at the Historic Macon Flea Market (see page XX). Homework is neatly aligned on a flea market-purchased desk for Insider’s Studio guests because, as he told Michelle, “it adds character.”

The Garlington children seem to live richly within their home, given the space to explore and create with an architecturally stunning backdrop that Michelle and Ethiel have taught them to appreciate and care for. Michelle is a designer, but on a more fundamental level, she is a thinker who pays attention to details, history, and how spaces can create meaning and joy.

The primary bedroom gently expresses this philosophy. Grasscloth wraps the walls in a warm, forgiving texture. Its irregularities invite the kind of analysis you might give clouds in the sky. Two Historic Macon Flea Market chairs angle toward the bed, designating a gathering space for the whole family. 

“If you were able to get a peek into our bedroom when there aren’t people coming over, you’d find a whiteboard listing our individual 2026 goals on the fireplace mantel, a pile of half-read books about architecture, philanthropy, and business littering our nightstands, and multiple pairs of running shoes — Ethiel’s, not mine — lining the hearth.”

More meaningful artifacts line the walls, including etchings of her great-grandfather’s design of the house on the Storm King Art Center grounds. Although Michelle never met him, the artworks passed down from his collection have given her tangible ways to know him. 

A house built in 1858 both gives and takes; its longevity requires attention from many hands and inevitably serves more than one person. The Garlingtons understand themselves as part of this continuum. They are caretakers of its history while making highly intentional choices about its present and future.

Historically, the Center Hall would’ve helped circulate air in the high heat of summer. It has since served many more functions. It is a gallery for multigenerational curation and “slow design,” a racetrack for balance bikes, a temporary warehouse for a blossoming business, a passageway between bedrooms… 

Most recently, it served as a gathering place during Insider’s Studio.

Guests pulled chairs from the dining room into the hall as Erin Hawkins and Cara Heard of 478 Creatives moderated a conversation with Michelle and Emily. When asked to rapid-fire share her “greatest turnoff,” Michelle said “ego.” 

She understands that great creations are almost never the result of a single individuals’ efforts. It is a gathering of minds, hands, and memories with each generation honoring the past and contributing toward the future.

One of Michelle’s most prized pieces of artwork now hangs in the dining room: a large-scale drawing by her Athens roommate, Ryan Roth. The piece is a sea of faces… a melting pot of friends, exes, colleagues, fellow artists, and those just passing through. It is the collective. 

The Center Hall runs straight through the heart of the Garlington home. 

So does everyone who came before.