Monastery at Large

Category: Architectural Movements and Styles

  • Relic Signs: Dixie Drive-In – Greenwood, South Carolina

    Dixie Drive-In (1959). 600 Montague Avenue, Greenwood, South Carolina.1

    References

    1. “Announcing the Grand Opening of the Dixie Drive-In” (advertisement). The Index-Journal (Greenwood, South Carolina), October 17, 1959, p. 3. ↩︎

  • M.A. Hale Residence (1892) – Inman Park, Atlanta

    M.A. Hale - Inman Park, Atlanta (1892) - Designed by J.W. GoLucke
    J.W. Golucke. M.A. Hale Residence (1892). Inman Park, Atlanta.

    This Queen Anne-style home is Atlanta’s only known extant work designed by J.W. Golucke (1857-1907),1 2 a shyster carpenter who built a career on smooth talk and grand delusions of being a legitimate architect.

    A thoroughly fraudulent and incompetent designer, Golucke was one of several “Atlanta architects” of his era who did little actual work in the city, primarily peddling their shoddy plans to poor, rural communities that didn’t know any better. Thus, if you travel through backwoods Georgia, you’ll find more than a dozen county courthouses by Golucke’s design3 — all of them terrible.

    Golucke fittingly died in a south Georgia jail cell while being held on charges of forgery,4 weeks after attempting suicide under the influence of drugs.5 6 His work is not celebrated here.

    References

    1. “Atlanta’s Growth.” The Atlanta Constitution, July 13, 1892, p. 7. ↩︎
    2. “Mrs. M.A. Hale’s Death.” The Atlanta Constitution, March 29, 1896, p. 6. ↩︎
    3. J.W. Golucke – Wikipedia ↩︎
    4. “Death Takes J.W. Golucke”. The Atlanta Constitution, October 28, 1907, p. 6. ↩︎
    5. “J.W. Golucke Tries to Take His Life in Newton Jail”. The Atlanta Journal, October 7, 1907, p. 1. ↩︎
    6. “Atlanta Man Tries Suicide”. The Atlanta Constitution, October 8, 1907, p. 9. ↩︎

  • Urban Life: World Trade Center Station

    I spent a day in New York back in January — it feels like a lifetime ago now.

    I wasted an hour on John Street that morning trying to figure out how the hell to get a decent picture of Wilson Eyre‘s Dennison Building — that’s a problem I will return to another time.

    Exasperated and edgy (I just had a large coffee from Donut Pub), I gave up and walked over to the corner of Dey and Church Streets, snapping this pic of Santiago Calatrava‘s World Trade Center Station.

    It wasn’t a total loss.

  • Spelman College Center for Innovation & the Arts (2025) – Atlanta

    Studio Gang with Goode Van Slyke Architecture. Spelman College Center for Innovation & the Arts (2025). Atlanta.

    There’s little architecture of merit in Atlanta: the city’s leaders have long despised passion and imagination, their minds too addled by the pursuit of power, oppression, and the illusion of status to spark creative inclination.

    Instead, Atlanta consistently copies the architectural designs of better cities, usually a decade or more after the fact, inevitably making cheap, watered-down imitations drawn by second-rate firms.

    Thus, it’s a genuine surprise when the city actually produces a building that warrants a second look, but here’s one: the new Center for Innovation & the Arts at Spelman College.

    South facade of Spelman College Center for Innovation & the Arts

    Spelman is a historically Black college for women, and the project was fittingly designed by Studio Gang of Chicago — founded by Jeanne Gang — with Goode Van Slyke Architecture — a Black-owned firm of Atlanta — as associate architect.

    Like all feeble and flimsy constructs of man, architecture is gasping its last self-important breaths, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult for designers to disguise that their job is, at its essence, to make decorative boxes for people to cower and shit in.

    Those who can pull off the ruse with ingenuity and style deserve recognition, however, and the designers of this project have done a fine job. Look beneath the building’s exoskeleton, and you’ll find a fairly standard, 4-story, 84,000-square-foot box.

    What gives the building panache are the metal sunshades and screens on its upper floors, which the Studio Gang site describes as “tuned to the angles of the sun”. OK, sure.

    Southwest corner of Spelman College Center for Innovation & the Arts

    With two recessed porches on the north and south sides and an open space atop the southwest corner, the building gives the faint illusion that it’s floating in the sky. It’s particularly stunning at dusk when the falling light deepens the orange and brown palette.

    The design recalls work by Philip Freelon, notably the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., and the  Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture in Charlotte, North Carolina.

    Studio Gang has made more interesting and, well, innovative buildings elsewhere, but for Atlanta, this is about as wild and daring an architectural design as you’ll find.

    Looking at Spelman College Center for Innovation & the Arts from the northwest

  • Georgian Terrace Hotel Addition (1991) – Atlanta

    Smallwood Reynolds Stewart Stewart & Associates. Atrium of Georgian Terrace Hotel Expansion (1991). Atlanta.1 2

    Atlanta’s overall architectural quality is among the worst of any major U.S. city, and you will never find a harsher critic than I of its subpar built environment.

    May it never be said, though, that I do not praise the few works in the city that are actually worthy of admiration. Here’s one: the 1991 expansion of the Georgian Terrace Hotel, designed by Smallwood Reynolds Stewart Stewart & Associates of Atlanta.

    The 20-story tower was attached to the original 1911 structure — the first of dozens of luxury hotels in the eastern United States designed by W.L. Stoddart of New York,3 4 5 who had deep ties to Atlanta,6 7 8 and designed several other buildings in the city, notably the Winecoff Hotel,9 10 site of the deadliest hotel fire in United States history.

    W.L. Stoddart. South facade of Georgian Terrace Hotel (1911). Atlanta.

    Efficient and prolific, Stoddart became a wealthy man from his many projects, although his legacy is all but forgotten today. I would argue that’s because he spent the bulk of his career sacrificing his creative talent — and there is ample evidence that he had actual talent — by lazily repeating the same designs, which became increasingly flavorless and banal.

    Compare Stoddart’s Poinsett Hotel in Greenville, South Carolina;11 the Francis Marion Hotel in Charleston, South Carolina;12 or the Hotel Savannah in Savannah, Georgia:13 the 3 buildings are nearly identical in appearance and plan.

    Thomas Wolfe was scathingly accurate in his assessment of Stoddart’s Battery Park Hotel in Asheville, North Carolina: “It was being stamped out of the same mold, as if by some gigantic biscuit-cutter of hotels that had produced a thousand others like it all over the country.”14

    After decades of neglect, the Georgian Terrace was abandoned in the 1980s and taken over by squatters, further damaged by a series of fires.15 16 Spared from inevitable demolition, the structure was initially renovated into luxury apartments,17 18 19 with Smallwood’s soaring glass and steel atrium, seen here, ingeniously connecting Stoddart’s hotel building with the modern addition.

    Smallwood Reynolds Stewart Stewart & Associates. Georgian Terrace Hotel Expansion (1991). Atlanta.

    Considered radical at the time, the design met with some local opposition20 21(isn’t that always the case?), but in the years since, the expanded Georgian Terrace — once again a hotel — has become an integral part of Midtown Atlanta, and is something rare for the city: a beautiful and unique space that preserves history.

    References

    1. Patureau, Alan. “Landmark Gets New Lease On Life”. The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, December 9, 1989, p. A-1. ↩︎
    2. Patureau, Alan. “A restored Georgian Terrace will shine again in city’s skyline”. The Atlanta Constitution, May 22, 1991, p. D1. ↩︎
    3. “$500,000 Hotel On Mims Corner”. The Atlanta Constitution, February 16, 1910, p. 5. ↩︎
    4. “New York Architect Is In The City”. The Atlanta Journal, August 13, 1910, p. 3. ↩︎
    5. “Atlanta’s New Hotel.” The Atlanta Constitution, October 4, 1911, p. 4. ↩︎
    6. “City Notes.” The Atlanta Constitution, March 26, 1892, p. 5. ↩︎
    7. “Bird’s-Eye View Of The Cotton States And International Exposition – Atlanta, Georgia, V.S.A.”, The Atlanta Constitution, November 4, 1894, p. 14. ↩︎
    8. “Miss Elizabeth Powell To Wed Mr. W.L. Stoddard”. The Atlanta Journal, February 19, 1898, p. 7. ↩︎
    9. “Peachtree Hotel To Cost $500,000”. The Atlanta Constitution, June 26, 1912, p. 3. ↩︎
    10. “15-Story Hotel To Grace Peachtree; Will Cost $600,000”. The Atlanta Journal, October 20, 1912, p. 1. ↩︎
    11. “Cleveland Firm To Get It At $925,000 And Structure Will Soon Be Fine Reality”. The Greenville News (Greenville, South Carolina), May 30, 1924, p. 2. ↩︎
    12. “Twelve-Story Structure For City Is Planned”. The Greenville News (Greenville, South Carolina), August 3, 1922, p. 1. ↩︎
    13. The Architectural Review, Volume 2, Part 1 (January 1913), p. 136. ↩︎
    14. Wolfe, Thomas. You Can’t Go Home Again. New York: Scribner (2011), p. 97. ↩︎
    15. Cordell, Actor. “Georgian Terrace, Imperial: old landmarks, new breed of ‘guests’”. The Atlanta Journal–Constitution, September 3, 1987, Intown Extra, p. 10D. ↩︎
    16. White, Gayle. “Georgian Terrace Hotel Is Damaged by Fire”. The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, October 26, 1988, p. 5C. ↩︎
    17. Patureau, Alan. “A restored Georgian Terrace will shine again in city’s skyline”. The Atlanta Constitution, May 22, 1991, p. D1. ↩︎
    18. Cordell, Actor. “Georgian Terrace, in new clothes, makes bow”. The Atlanta Constitution, October 17, 1991, Intown Extra, p. D7. ↩︎
    19. Royston, Deborah. “Grand Comeback”. The Atlanta Journal, October 17, 1991, p. E1. ↩︎
    20. Fox, Catherine. “The Art of Adding On”. The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, June 24, 1990, p. E-1. ↩︎
    21. Fox, Catherine. “With Preservation Ordinance in place, it’s a whole new ballgame for UDC”. The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, June 24, 1990, p. N-2. ↩︎