Amazing Staircases: Gone With the Wind

The 1939 film Gone With The Wind features four beautiful staircases that have come to define the elegance, grace and grandeur of interior stair design. The staircase in the foyer of Aunt Pittypat's home in Atlanta would probably be closer in design and layout to authentic homes of that time than the other stairs featured in the movie.

Aunt Pittypat's stair is a U-shaped stair that has painted stringers, risers, balusters and newels and hardwood rail, and treads. The stringers feature ornate stringer brackets that highlight the area below each tread.

At the first floor, the rail begins the ascent with a fantastic cap and 90 degree rail fitting that sits atop a twisted starting newel. The stair ascends 13 risers to a double landing that has about 2 ft. of horizontal rail across it. From the landing, another 9 risers bring you to the second floor, which actually did exist in part on this set. The rail is a 5" x 4" box rail that is very similar to the rail used on the Tara stair, and the balusters are an alternating twist pattern similar to the Twelve Oaks staircase.

Like the other stairs in the movie, it was only built as part of a temporary set and torn apart as soon as filming was over. Little is know about the actual stair builders that built these amazing staircases, but it was designed by Lyle Wheeler who won an Academy Award for his design work on the 90 sets and 50 full size buildings used in the movie.