Architecture

Atlanta is renowned for the taste and sumptuousness of its residences in their green setting of trees, shrubbery, and sweeping hills. The audacious variety of its architecture sets it apart from older cities of the South. Here are no quiet streets of columns and magnolias—although both of these are seen sometimes— but humming thoroughfares where Gothic, Renaissance, Tudor, Romanesque, Southern Colonial, and modern dwellings are blended with harmony and vivacity.

Yet this notable architecture has developed from an origin of pioneer crudeness within only a century. Before the city was founded, the only substantial building in the vicinity was Whitehall Tavern, erected early in the 1830's. When John Thrasher, contractor for the Monroe Railroad, came in 1839 to the site of the terminus, the only dwelling he found was a rude structure of logs. Similar dwellings were quickly erected for the railroad workmen, huts of two rooms with sometimes a lean-to added. These huts were made of puncheons, logs roughly sawed in half, with the smooth side turned in and the cracks daubed with mud. At first the floors were only of earth, but, as soon as the railroad workmen began to bring their families, puncheon floors were installed.

The first builders, uncertain of the future for their little community, erected no substantial buildings until the City of Atlanta had been incorporated on December 29, 1847. Two months before that date Dr. William N. White, who had come from New York to teach school, noted: "...the woods around are full of shanties, and the merchants live in them until they can find time to build." He further added: "Atlanta so far has not a good house in the place-except the hotel.

After the city was incorporated, however, conveniences and even decorative details were not long in appearing. The Greek Revival had passed from its pure beginnings into an era of departure from the classic perfection of its friezes, cornices, and columns. Some such details there were in early Atlanta houses, but they were seldom of the finest. In near-by Roswell, Barrington Hall, Bulloch Hall, and Mimosa Hall showed the fine simplicity of this classical influence; Atlanta was built too late to receive it. By the beginning of the 1850's the first unpainted two-room huts were being replaced by geometrically trim white plank dwellings with two rooms on each side of a hallway, sometimes with a stairway leading to a second story. Fireplaces were usually set flush with the inner walls, and the brick chimneys towered above each end of the peaked shingled roofs. The Huff House, built 1854-5, one of the few surviving buildings of this period.

Builders began to use brick also in the main body, frequently mortising the outer walls with lime and the inner ones with mud. In 1852 Patrick Lynch, an Irish stone mason, erected on Gilmer Street Atlanta's first brick house. A fine example of brick construction during this period was the compact two-story city hall and courthouse erected in 1855- Dignity and strength were implicit in the unpretentious lines of this edifice, with its central cupola, balconied Doric entrances, and high windows with plain lintels and louvered green shutters. The red brick of the courthouse was matched in the posts of the encircling fence of white wooden palings. Also erected during this period were the Central Presbyterian and First Baptist churches, substantial brick structures with wooden spires that stood west of the courthouse. A still more striking achievement of the fifties was the red-brick depot, one of the first in which the train could be taken under the shed.

Other buildings of the late ante-bellum period were constructed of rock from the near-by granite quarries, a novel example being the Calico House built by Marcus Bell in 1860 and later used by General Sherman as his first headquarters during his occupation of the city. The rock surface was covered with plaster, which was painted gayly in blue, red, and yellow in imitation of the marbling process used inside book covers. Most of the domestic architecture, however, whether the material was wood, brick, or stone, followed more academic designs. The variety among Atlanta residences a year or so before Sherman destroyed them is shown in Margaret Mitchell's Gone With The Wind: "Scarlett picked them out as old friends, the Leyden House, dignified and stately; the Bonnells', with little white columns and green blinds; the close-lipped red brick Georgian home of the McLure family, behind its low boxwood hedges."

During the fighting around Atlanta most of the houses were shattered by exploding shells or burned by Federal soldiers. After peace was declared the citizens, their cash rendered worthless, had to rebuild and repair largely by their own labor. Sometimes, when only the four walls of a dwelling were standing, shelter would be provided by merely laying on a roof. Some formerly fine residences presented a tragic appearance with their clapboards patched with roughly dressed lumber, and it was some years before the survivors of the siege had sufficient money to improve their habitations.

But at this time history changed the course of Atlanta's architectural development. After the war the bustling railroad city was crowded with Northern soldiers, merchants, and speculators, many with ample cash to build for themselves. The services of architects were demanded, and William H. Parkins, probably Atlanta's first practicing architect, came to the city early in 1868, soon followed by Calvin Fay, who had lived here before the war but had not practiced. Both these men and others now opened offices. In 1869 Parkins designed the brick Gothic Church of the Immaculate Conception, which still serves an active Roman Catholic congregation.

Building operations, vitalized by capital from outside, began to push out in all directions and to develop new sections out of the surrounding forest and pasture lands. The features of the rebuilt city were being changed by a type of architecture that was the antithesis of the old. Even as early as 1868, the new four-story building that was begun as Kimball's Opera House and later used as the capitol, despite the classical work on its ground floor exterior, presaged the coming romantic trend in its cupola and mansard roof. Sometimes the two styles were combined incongruously, and Corinthian columns stood in grotesque juxtaposition to scrollwork and towers. In Atlanta as elsewhere the seventies and eighties constituted a period of reaction against the simplicity of the Greek Revival, so that both commercial and domestic architecture took on the characteristics of what has since been christened the gingerbread era balustrades, scrollsaw banisters, snuffbox turrets, broken roof lines, leaded glass windows. During the last two decades of the century the Romanesque Revival brought circular windows, clustered pillars, sweeping arches, and heavy asymmetrical masses.

Northward out Peachtree Street spread miles of this fanciful decoration executed in wood or brick or stone, but the houses it adorned, despite some overcrowding of details, often presented a handsome appearance with their ivy and softening shrubbery. The stern colors of stone and iron made a fine background for the vital green of the grass lawns that were supplanting the bare yards and tangled gardens of the sixties. Some of the older Peachtree residences still standing are excellent examples of this period, such as the brick and brownstone Silvey-Speer House and the stone houses of Mrs. Samuel M. Inman, Sr., and A.G. Rhodes (now Rhodes Memorial Hall). The public edifices of the time include the Kimball House, the Atlanta Constitution Building, and Sacred Heart Church.

Some of the churches were well executed, especially the simpler modernized Gothic ones such as All Saints and St. Luke s. Likewise there was good ornamentation in some early skyscrapers. The Candler Building, the first of these in Atlanta, is somewhat overburdened with classical decorations, but later office buildings showed a more discriminating simplicity. The Healey Building is a good example of business Gothic architecture, and the old post office shows the good taste of the architect in adapting the Italian Renaissance style to commercial purposes. From the first days of its tall buildings, the Atlanta downtown section has presented difficulties to architects because of the irregular shape of its lots; but these lots have been utilized with increasing ingenuity.

In 1915 when the first buildings of the new Emory University were erected, the material and style were considered daringly experimental. In contrast to the nondescript buildings characteristic of older colleges in this region, the Emory structures are of pink Georgia marble in Italian Renaissance style modernized to plane surfaces and simple lines. In their setting of pines and shrubbery these buildings now stand as an appropriate as well as a striking example of school architecture. After the first World War the real estate boom developed new residential areas, where the more expensive homes began to show the harmony of building and landscaping for which Atlanta is known.

One of the strongest influences of the war and post-war eras was brought by the architect Neel Reid, whose previous studies abroad found expression in numerous houses of fine fidelity to European classical patterns. Reid's execution was not limited to any particular style, but his talent was shown most frequently in houses of Renaissance or Georgian inspiration. Among the distinguished examples of his work are the Case-Martin House, a limestone edifice of eighteenth-century classical style with Renaissance details, the front facing on a cobbled courtyard and a limestone wall; the Andrew Calhoun House, of Italian baroque in sunburned stucco with pale green shutters; the Georgian white stucco Edward Inman House, flanked by tall Egyptian obelisks; and the gray stucco Cooper-Brooks House of Italian Renaissance style. Reid was only in his prime at the time of his death in 1926, but he had lived long enough to inspire other talented architects who have insisted on purity of detail in their work.

The most important trend of the 193o's has been the stronger affirmation of good taste in smaller houses, several of which have received national notice. A good example is the Harold Bunger House in Decatur, of French Provincial design executed in red brick with a mansard roof and long green shutters. The great improvement in the smaller dwellings is due in part to the rise of functionalism with its greater simplicity and utility and in part to the long-term loans of the Federal Housing Administration and the strict architectural requirements attendant on such loans. Atlanta has only recently become acquainted with what is known as "modernistic" architecture in its dwelling houses, and this influence is still negligible.

One of Atlanta's many paradoxes is that its Southern Colonial, or Greek Revival, architecture did not come in the mid-nineteenth century, as it came to other Southern cities, but in the 1930's as a new and modified second revival. The old form of interior planning has been altered to suit modern conditions, but many classical decorations are being employed with grace and distinction. There are no examples of the pure Greek temple type, but many of the finer new houses show columns, chaste friezes, and well-proportioned porticoes. Among the best examples of new houses showing the later classical influence are the Hal Hentz, Robert Alston, and Hugh Nunnally houses.

Atlanta contains both good and bad examples of modern design in stores, office buildings, and industrial plants. The two leading department stores are admirably arranged for commercial purposes, and their unadorned surfaces—Rich's of brick and limestone and Davison's of red brick—are agreeable and restful to the eye. The newest skyscrapers also have been modeled on the plan of a shaft with unbroken lines; and the William-Oliver Building and Rhodes-Haverty Building, with their long lines and simple fenestration, exemplify the modern trend away from cornices, consoles, and virtually all exterior decorations not strictly necessary to functional purposes. The new Coca-Cola bottling plant, a broad low building of brick and limestone with clear glass windows, also combines functionalism with attractive, unpretentious decorative features. Several large slum areas in various parts of the city have been replaced by the long low brick or stucco buildings of Federal Housing projects.

An article by Marguerite Steedman in the Atlanta Journal, December 15, 1935, presents an acute observation on modern downtown Atlanta: The ground floors of many buildings... have been altered repeatedly for the benefit of progress or a new tenant. But the upper stories often remain as our mothers and grandmothers knew them ... one glances up, past modern plate glass and chromium, to discover overhead windows still shadowed by sculptured arches or old signs and dates which form integral parts of the walls themselves and so have escaped removal. Dates running from 1875 to 1890 are often found, half hidden in the shadow of a chimney or a steep, fancifully plastered gable ... many Atlanta buildings still boast their chimneys, relics of the day when every office had its small coal grate or air-tight stove, ... One structure, at the corner of Alabama and Broad Streets, has second story windows which are shadowed by thick overhanging eyebrows of molded terra cotta, wrought into wreaths of fruit and flowers.

Atlanta's irregular downtown pattern, with its slanting, narrow streets, makes congestion inevitable in this area. Its best office buildings are not seen to best advantage, for they frequently are obstructed by other edifices. The residential sections, however, are justly noted for their beauty. The antiquarian in his journey over the South may miss the flavor of time in Atlanta architecture, but he will find contrast, beauty, and vitality.

Contents