Monastery at Large

Category: C. Walter Smith

  • “St. Philip’s New Deanery In Course of Construction” (1898)

    The Background

    Separate from its series on model houses — but not dissimilar — The Atlanta Journal published the following article in September 1898, featuring an illustration of the “deanery” (pictured above) then being built for St. Philip’s Cathedral and designed by C. Walter Smith.

    The Episcopal Cathedral of St. Philip is as old as Atlanta, established in 1847. Its original sanctuary served as a hospital for Confederate soldiers during the Civil War and was later occupied by Federal troops, who reportedly used it as a stable and bowling alley.1 2

    The building was saved from Sherman‘s burning of Atlanta, allegedly after a priest from the nearby Church of the Immaculate Conception threatened to order all Catholic troops to leave the army if they torched his sanctuary. Because of St. Philip’s proximity to the Catholic church, both structures were said to be spared.3 4

    Cute story, but like most things associated with Atlanta, it’s probably bullshit. In reality, Sherman’s forces primarily targeted military assets and burned less than half of the city,5 which at the time was a town of 22,000 people occupying an area significantly smaller than the current Downtown district.6 You’d never know it from the way Atlantans still drone on about it, though.

    The antebellum St. Philip’s was instead destroyed by a tornado in 1878,7 8 replaced in 1882 with a Gothic-style sanctuary designed by John Moser,9 10 an Atlanta architect whose work in the city has been entirely lost to demolition.

    For more than 85 years, the church occupied a large lot in the heart of the city at the northeast corner of Washington Street and Hunter Street (later Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive SE), directly across from the state capitol.

    Mammon and racism beckoned, however, and in 1933, St. Philip’s moved 7 miles north to Buckhead,11 12 building a sprawling fortress at the intersection of Peachtree Road and Andrews Drive (a.k.a. “Jesus Junction”), where it remains cloistered today.

    Located at 16 Washington Street, the deanery designed by Smith was built next to the 1882 sanctuary,13 and by 1899 was occupied by the church’s dean, Albion W. Knight.14 No floor plan was included with the Journal‘s article, but there were still several interesting aspects about the project that can be gleaned from the illustration and description.

    • The building was ostensibly designed in the Gothic style, with drop arches and kneelered gables. However, the oval window and dentilled cornice were borrowed from the prevailing “colonial” style of the period. Smith’s eclectic composition clearly followed the lead of his former employer, G.L. Norrman, but unlike Norrman, Smith lacked the skill to blend incongruent elements into a cohesive composition.
    • Smith’s design for the deanery also broke from his predecessor in two significant ways:
      • G.L. Norrman rarely used the Gothic style and preferred the Romanesque for church projects.
      • Smith’s design for the deanery included the use of “galvanized iron ornaments”, of which Norrman was a vocal opponent. “How can you expect your child to tell the truth when you have galvanized iron columns painted in imitation of stone on your front porch?”, he wrote in 1898.15
    • The deanery was planned in a roughly “T” shape with protruding front and rear wings, which Smith used frequently in his residential works. The C.D. Hurt House, built in 1893 in nearby Inman Park, employed a similar design. G.L. Norrman was undoubtedly the architect for that project, and I suspect Smith was also heavily involved in its creation.
    Former St. Philip’s deanery, circa 1910.16

    The St. Philip’s deanery only housed the dean for 11 years. In 1909, construction on the first Washington Street viaduct blocked the home’s entrance, rendering it effectively unusable and leading the church to sue the city of Atlanta for damages.17

    The city government then rented the structure in 1910, converting it into a school building to accommodate overcrowding at nearby Girls’ High School.18 19

    The condition of Atlanta’s schools at the time was abysmal, and the old deanery didn’t provide much relief. In January 1913, the Journal reported that 133 students were packed into the building, noting ominously: “If there were a fire…there would be many funerals in Atlanta homes.”20

    The same article included a rough sketch of the building’s floor plan (pictured below), which had been altered for school use but still hinted at Smith’s original design.

    Sketch of floor plan for former St. Philip’s Deanery, circa 1913.21

    The school vacated the building in August 1913,22 and it returned to use as the “church house”, used for meetings and community events. In 1916, the church’s new dean repurposed the structure to house “club rooms for working men and a school for needy boys and girls.”23 By 1917, the space was also being used as a public lunchroom by the Ladies’ Aid Society.24

    The building was apparently still intact when St. Philip’s moved to Buckhead, and was presumably demolished along with the sanctuary in 1935.25 26

    The property is now occupied by the State of Georgia’s Department of Agriculture building, completed in 1955.27

    St. Philip’s New Deanery In Course of Construction

    The above cut represents the deanery of St. Philips’ cathedral, which is in process of erection on Washington street. The plans are by C. Walter Smith and the motif is gothic in design and detail.

    The building has brick walls and a granite foundation, with stone and galvanized iron ornaments.

    The interior finish is worked out in plain, rich gothic, and the woodwork is of Georgia pine, highly polished.

    The cost of the building will be about $4,000, and it will be pushed to early completion.

    The design is an attractive one and reflects credit on both the architect and the authorities who adopted it.

    The cathedral building is at the same time undergoing repairs and the appearance of the exterior of the wall will be entirely changed.28

    References

    1. “First Episcopal Church in Atlanta”. The Atlanta Journal, July 29, 1923, p. 9. ↩︎
    2. Perkerson, Medora Field. “St. Philip’s Is 85 Years Old.” The Atlanta Journal Magazine, October 30, 1932, p. 3. ↩︎
    3. “First Episcopal Church in Atlanta”. The Atlanta Journal, July 29, 1923, p. 9. ↩︎
    4. Perkerson, Medora Field. “St. Philip’s Is 85 Years Old.” The Atlanta Journal Magazine, October 30, 1932, p. 3. ↩︎
    5. The (Limited) Destruction of Atlanta – Emerging Civil War ↩︎
    6. Atlanta in the American Civil War – Wikipedia ↩︎
    7. “First Episcopal Church in Atlanta”. The Atlanta Journal, July 29, 1923, p. 9. ↩︎
    8. Perkerson, Medora Field. “St. Philip’s Is 85 Years Old.” The Atlanta Journal Magazine, October 30, 1932, p. 3. ↩︎
    9. “The New St. Philip’s Church.” The Atlanta Constitution, December 19, 1880, p. 1. ↩︎
    10. “St. Philip’s New Church.” The Atlanta Constitution, October 15, 1882, p. 11. ↩︎
    11. “St. Philip’s Cathedral Plans New Peachtree Road Building”. The Atlanta Constitution, May 15, 1933, p. 1. ↩︎
    12. “St. Philip’s Pro-Cathedral Will Be Dedicated Sunday, With Bishop Miskell Here”. The Atlanta Journal, September 9, 1933, p. 9. ↩︎
    13. Insurance maps, Atlanta, Georgia, 1911 / published by the Sanborn Map Company ↩︎
    14. Atlanta City Directory Co.’s Greater Atlanta (Georgia) city directory (1899) ↩︎
    15. Norrman, G.L. Architecture As Illustrative of Religious Belief and as a Means of Tracing Civilization (1898) ↩︎
    16. “Home of Atlanta’s Fourth High School”. The Atlanta Journal, October 9, 1910, p. H 5. ↩︎
    17. “Church Sues City For $20,000 Damages”. The Atlanta Constitution, June 26, 1909, p. 6. ↩︎
    18. “Girls’ Business School Makes Stride Forward”. The Atlanta Journal, September 25, 1910, p. H 8. ↩︎
    19. “St. Philip’s Deanery Will Be School Soon”. The Atlanta Constitution, October 1, 1910, p. 12. ↩︎
    20. “Need Is Imperative For New High School House”. The Atlanta Journal, January 17, 1913, p. 14. ↩︎
    21. ibid. ↩︎
    22. “Old Crew St. School Will Be Used Again”. The Atlanta Constitution, July 31, 1913, p. 8. ↩︎
    23. “St. Philip’s Will Have Church School”. The Atlanta Journal, March 12, 1916, p. 7. ↩︎
    24. “The Ladies Aid of St. Philip’s Cathedral”. The Atlanta Constitution, February 21, 1917, p. 8. ↩︎
    25. “Cornerstone of Old St. Philip’s Will Be Removed to New Church.” The Atlanta Constitution, November 16, 1935, p. 3. ↩︎
    26. “St. Philip’s Cornerstone Opened”. The Atlanta Journal, November 24, 1935, Rotogravure Section. ↩︎
    27. “Agriculture Building To Be Occupied Soon”. The Atlanta Constitution, October 17, 1955, p. 20. ↩︎
    28. “St. Philip’s New Deanery In Course of Construction”. The Atlanta Journal, September 26, 1898, p. 6. ↩︎

  • “Journal Model Houses; Residence of Mr. George Wade” (1898)

    The Background

    This is the sixth in a series of articles published by The Atlanta Journal in 1898 featuring illustrations and floor plans of residences designed by Atlanta architects.

    The article highlights the George Wade Residence, designed by C. Walter Smith, who served for many years as a draughtsman and later chief assistant to G.L. Norrman,1 2 before successfully establishing his own firm in 1896.3

    The Wade home’s floor plan hints at how much Smith was responsible for designing Norrman’s residences — I suspect it was quite a bit.

    There isn’t much to criticize about the plan: Smith crafted a solid layout with 4 rooms on each floor clustered around a central stair hall. Each of the bedrooms included a closet, and the second floor contained a standard “trunk room” and dressing room, as seen in previous plans in this series.

    Two oddities were the tiny den tacked on the back of the reception hall, and the massive dining room with an interior wall that awkwardly jutted out into the stairs hall.

    As noted in the article, the Wade House was designed in the nebulous “colonial” style of the 1890s, which, in this case, consisted primarily of dentilled cornices and decorative garlands on the friezes and porch pediment.

    Festive garland ornamentation was Smith’s trademark element — you can find it in nearly all of his surviving buildings, as well as many of G.L. Norrman’s works from Smith’s time in his employment.

    Also note the tapered chimneys, which were incorporated in numerous Norrman projects from the late 1880s to mid-1890s, again indicating the level of Smith’s involvement in Norrman’s firm.

    Still, Norrman must have guided those designs with a fairly heavy hand, because Smith’s solo work lacked the panache of his mentor, and you can clearly see the limits of his ability in the Wade House illustration (pictured above).

    Whereas Norrman consistently produced refined and cohesive compositions, Smith’s buildings often appeared boxy and plain with clumsy touches of embellishment — the Wade design is a prime example.

    Located at 341 Gordon Street (later 249, then 1097 Gordon Street SW) in Atlanta’s West End, the home was occupied by the Wade family for only 3 years. Wade moved to Cedartown, Georgia, circa 1899,4 where he established a knitting mill that manufactured ladies’ underwear.5

    Smith subsequently designed Wade’s home in Cedartown6 7 — which still stands, along with an additional knitting mill,8 which does not.

    Former G.H. Wade House, circa 1914.9

    The former Wade home was occupied for many years by Mr. and Mrs. W.R. Beauprie. Mr. Beauprie died in the home in January 1922,10 while his wife, Carrie E. Beauprie, died in the home over 10 years later, in June 1932.11

    The exact date of the home’s demolition is unclear, but in 1957, a newspaper classified ad said of the property: “Owner Leaving State SACRIFICE FOR QUICK SALE”, noting its commercial zoning and a location “Right in the path of progress.”12 By 1960, the site was occupied by — what else? — a gas station.13

    Journal Model Houses; Residence of Mr. George Wade

    The above cut shows a perspective view of Mr. George Wade’s house on Gordon street, at the corner of Lawton, in West End. It was built 18 months ago from the plans of Mr. Walter Smith of Atlanta, and is one of the prettiest and most comfortable homes in the city. Every inch of space is utilized, and the house is rich in closets and all kinds of conveniences.

    The design of the modern colonial type and the picture shows how it is worked out. The construction is very thorough. The walls are double and the floors are double, with tarred felt between. The interior finish downstairs is antique oak with the exception of the parlor, the sitting room and the den. The parlor is in white enamel, the den in red oak, and the sitting room in curly pine.

    There is a very attractive arrangement of the entrance, reception hall, stair hall and parlor. The reception hall, parlor and sitting room can be thrown together or completely separated by the sliding doors.

    The second floor is natural pine, cabinet finish. The floors are waxed and polished. The windows are fitted with inside blinds and the house is equipped with electric bells, gas lighting and door openers. There are cabinet mantels in every room and in the hall and the stair hall is separated from the reception hall by pretty grill work, and the stairs are finished in antique oak. The foundation is a solid wall, and there is a good brick basement with a furnace room.

    The plumbing is the best and thoroughly ventilated. The workmanship throughout is first class and the house is a gem. It cost when built $5,240, and can be duplicated for about $5,000. The painting is in the prevailing colonial colors.14

    References

    1. “A Card”. The Atlanta Constitution, March 1, 1893, p. 10. ↩︎
    2. Atlanta City Directory Co.’s Greater Atlanta (Georgia) city directory (1894) ↩︎
    3. “Out For Himself.” The Atlanta Constitution, April 19, 1896, p. 20. ↩︎
    4. “Loitering In The Lobbies”. The Atlanta Journal, February 6, 1899, p. 10. ↩︎
    5. “The Wahneta Mills.” The Macon Telegraph, January 2, 1899, p. 8. ↩︎
    6. The Cedartown Standard (Cedartown, Georgia), August 30, 1900, p. 2. ↩︎
    7. “Improvements At Cedartown”. The Atlanta Constitution, September 15, 1900, p. 4. ↩︎
    8. The Cedartown Standard (Cedartown, Georgia), August 16, 1900, p. 3. ↩︎
    9. “Scenes and Streets of Homes in West End”. The Atlanta Journal, August 23, 1914, p. 8H. ↩︎
    10. “Mr. W.R. Beauprie, Well Known in Atlanta, To Be Buried Sunday”. The Atlanta Constitution, January 14, 1922, p. 10. ↩︎
    11. “Fall Injuries Fatal To Mrs. C.E. Beauprie”. The Atlanta Constitution, June 5, 1932, p. 10A. ↩︎
    12. “Business Property 165”. The Atlanta Constitution, June 21, 1957, p. 27. ↩︎
    13. “100 Extra Gold Bond Stamps!” (advertisement). The Atlanta Constitution, June 16, 1960, p. 29. ↩︎
    14. “Journal Model Houses; Residence of Mr. George Wade”. The Atlanta Journal, February 12, 1898, p. 10. ↩︎

  • W.T. Roberts Residence (1901) – Douglasville, Georgia

    C. Walter Smith. W.T. Roberts Residence (1901). Douglasville, Georgia.1 2

    References

    1. The Southern Architect and Contractor, Volume 11, no. 51 (January 25, 1901), p. 1. ↩︎
    2. Roberts-Mozley House – Cultural Arts Council Douglasville/Douglas County ↩︎

  • First Baptist Church (1905) – Greensboro, Georgia

    C. Walter Smith. First Baptist Church (1905). Greensboro, Georgia.1 2 3 4

    References

    1. The Advocate-Democrat (Crawfordville, Georgia), February 14, 1902, p. 7. ↩︎
    2. “Public Buildings.” The Engineering Record, Vol. 45, no. 20 (March 17, 1902), p. 478. ↩︎
    3. “A New Baptist Church For City Of Greensboro”. The Atlanta Constitution, May 20, 1904, p. 3. ↩︎
    4. “From the Union Point News”. The Advocate-Democrat (Crawfordville, Georgia), April 28, 1905, p. 4. ↩︎