The Architecture Of Francis Palmer Smith Atlanta S Scholar Architect

Francis Palmer Smith was the principal designer of Atlanta-based Pringle and Smith, one of the leading firms of the early twentieth-century South. Smith was an academic eclectic who created traditional, history-based architecture grounded in the teachings of the cole des Beaux-Arts. As The Architecture of Francis Palmer Smith shows, Smith was central to the establishment of the Beaux-Arts perspective in the South through his academic and professional career. After studying with Paul Philippe Cret at the University of Pennsylvania, Smith moved to Atlanta in 1909 to head the new architecture program at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He would go on to train some of the South's most significant architects, including Philip Trammell Shutze, Flippen Burge, Preston Stevens, Ed Ivey, and Lewis E. Crook Jr. In 1922 Smith formed a partnership with Robert S. Pringle. In Atlanta, Savannah, Chattanooga, Jacksonville, Sarasota, Miami, and elsewhere, Smith built office buildings, hotels, and Art Deco skyscrapers; buildings at Georgia Tech, the Baylor School in Chattanooga, and the Darlington School in Rome, Georgia; Gothic Revival churches; standardized bottling plants for Coca-Cola; and houses in a range of traditional "period" styles in the suburbs. Smith's love of medieval architecture culminated with his 1962 masterwork, the Cathedral of St. Philip in Atlanta. As his career drew to a close, Modernism was establishing itself in America. Smith's own modern aesthetic was evidenced in the more populist modern of Art Deco, but he never embraced the abstract machine aesthetic of high Modern. Robert M. Craig details the role of history in design for Smith and his generation, who believed that architecture is an art and that ornament, cultural reference, symbolism, and tradition communicate to clients and observers and enrich the lives of both. This book was supported, in part, by generous grants from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and the Georgia Tech Foundation, Inc.

The architectural development of Georgia Tech began as a core of Victorian-era buildings sited around a campus green and Tech Tower. During the subsequent Beaux-Arts era, designers (who were also members of the architecture faculty) added traditionally styled buildings, with many of them in a pseudo-Jacobean collegiate redbrick style. Early Modernist Paul Heffernan led an architectural revolution in his academic village of functionalist buildings on campus--an aesthetic that inspired additional International Style campus buildings. Formalist, Brutalist, and Post-Modern architecture followed, and when Georgia Tech was selected as the Olympic Village for the 1996 Summer Olympics, new residence halls were added to the campus. Between 1994 and 2008, Georgia Tech president G. Wayne Clough stewarded over $1 billion in capital improvements at the school, notably engaging midtown Atlanta with the development of Technology Square. The landscape design by recent campus planners is especially noteworthy, featuring a purposeful designation of open spaces, accommodations for pedestrian perambulations, and public art. What might have developed into a prosaic assemblage of academic and research buildings has instead evolved into a remarkably competent assemblage of aesthetically pleasing architecture.

The architectural development of Georgia Tech began as a core of Victorian-era buildings sited around a campus green and Tech Tower. During the subsequent Beaux-Arts era, designers (who were also members of the architecture faculty) added traditionally styled buildings, with many of them in a pseudo-Jacobean collegiate redbrick style. Early Modernist Paul Heffernan led an architectural revolution in his academic village of functionalist buildings on campus--an aesthetic that inspired additional International Style campus buildings. Formalist, Brutalist, and Post-Modern architecture followed, and when Georgia Tech was selected as the Olympic Village for the 1996 Summer Olympics, new residence halls were added to the campus. Between 1994 and 2008, Georgia Tech president G. Wayne Clough stewarded over $1 billion in capital improvements at the school, notably engaging midtown Atlanta with the development of Technology Square. The landscape design by recent campus planners is especially noteworthy, featuring a purposeful designation of open spaces, accommodations for pedestrian perambulations, and public art. What might have developed into a prosaic assemblage of academic and research buildings has instead evolved into a remarkably competent assemblage of aesthetically pleasing architecture.

During the Roaring Twenties, millions of Americans moved to the Sunshine State seeking quick riches in real estate. Many made fortunes; others returned home penniless. Within a few years thousands of residential subdivisions, palatial estates, inviting apartment buildings and impressive commercial complexes were built. Opulent theaters and imposing churches opened, along with hundreds of municipal projects. A unique architectural theme emerged, today known as Mediterranean Revival. Railways and highways saw a renaissance. New cities--Boca Raton, Hollywood-by-the-Sea, Venice--were built from scratch and dozens of existing communities like St. Petersburg, Fort Lauderdale and Orlando were forever transformed by the speculative fever. Florida has experienced numerous land booms but none more sweeping than that of the 1920s. This illuminating account details how one of the greatest migration and development episodes in American history began, reached dizzying heights, then rapidly collapsed.

The Druid Hills neighborhood is characterized by rolling hills, magnificent trees and shrubs and gorgeous, expansive houses. Its Ponce de Leon corridor bears the imprint of the founder of American landscape architecture, Frederick Law Olmsted. The brainchild of Joel Hurt, the neighborhood was brought to fruition by some of Atlanta's most prominent businessmen, including Asa Candler, founder of Coca-Cola. It was these movers and shakers of the city who lived in the neighborhood during the early decades of the twentieth century. In 1914, Druid Hills was permanently altered with the announcement that it would be the site of Emory University's new main campus. Now the residents coexist with what has become an international university community. Historian Robert Hartle Jr. has written an honest, impeccably researched tribute to Druid Hills, truly one of the jewels in Atlanta's crown.