Monastery at Large

Category: Architecture

“This Georgia Woman Stands High In Her Profession” (1902)
Henrietta C. Dozier (attributed). G.W. Gignilliat Residence. Seneca, South Carolina.¹

The Background

Henrietta Cuttino Dozier (1872-1947), professionally known as Henrietta C. Dozier, was the first female architect in the Southeastern United States, practicing in Atlanta from 1901 to 1914, and then in Jacksonville, Florida, for the remainder of her life and career.

The United States had 22 female architects by 1895,² which increased to over 200 by 1920.³ Beginning in the 1890s, the slow but steady rise of women in male-dominated professions, including architecture, spurred a flurry of press articles, with claims of a “woman invasion” stoking fierce public reaction — keep in mind, women weren’t even allowed to vote until 1920.

Atlantans’ first exposure to a “lady architect” came during the development of the Cotton States and International Exposition in 1894, when plans for the Women’s Building were solicited exclusively from female designers — a radical proposal at the time.

Upon seeing the submitted plans, T. H. Morgan of Bruce & Morgan reportedly remarked: “Why, these buildings are bold enough to have been drawn by men.”⁴

Elise Mercur of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, secured the commission for the women’s building, winning over 12 other submissions, including one by Dozier, who was then studying at the Pratt Institute in New York.⁵ ⁶ Dozier entered Pratt as its only female student, ranking second in her class.⁷

Dozier (pictured here⁸) was born in Fernandina Beach, Florida, but raised in Atlanta by her single mother — her father died 4 months before she was born.⁹ She attended the Atlanta public schools before heading north, where she studied at Pratt and later the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), graduating in 1899 with a B.S. in Architecture¹⁰ — one of just three women in a class of 176 students.¹¹

An unconventional woman for her era, Dozier never married, reportedly dressed in men’s clothing, and was known to her friends and family as “Harry” and “Uncle Harry”¹² ¹³ ¹⁴ — draw your own conclusions.

In 1893, The Atlanta Journal described “Harry Dozier” as “a young girl of unusual force and mental determination. She is quite young, and quite handsome…”¹⁵

Dozier learned to fly airplanes in her 60s,¹⁶ and following her death, her relatives were surprised to discover a manuscript she had written for an unpublished romance novella. Sample text:

“Men do not get what they deserve in life, they get what they go after,” said Elizabeth. “So? My dear, I think women do a lot of going after what they want also … At least, you know how to get what you want.”¹⁷

Only one of Dozier’s known works survives in Atlanta: a residence she designed for Mrs. O.K. Slifer on 10th Avenue overlooking Piedmont Park. The structure now serves as a school building and has been altered.

Henrietta C. Dozier. O.K. Slifer Residence (1912, altered). Atlanta.¹⁸ ¹⁹

Although Dozier often downplayed her professional difficulties in interviews, there is ample evidence that she faced severe discrimination in a field that largely remains an old boys’ club. As one article noted in 1903: “It is only recently that the men in the profession began to regard women architects as other than a huge joke.”²⁰

Dozier wasn’t a spectacular designer by any means, but she also wasn’t given nearly as many opportunities to refine her skills as her male counterparts, securing few large-scale commissions throughout her career. In a 1939 interview, she noted: “…in the last few years, I have done nothing but small residential homes.”

Dozier said she was “always very proud” of her work on the Jacksonville branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta,²¹ which can easily be considered her finest effort. She was officially credited as supervising architect for the project, working under A. Ten Eyck Brown of Atlanta. However, Brown often claimed credit for projects he had little to no hand in designing, and it appears Dozier did most of the work.

A. Ten Eyck Brown with Henrietta C. Dozier. Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, Jacksonville Branch (1924), Jacksonville, Florida.²² Photograph from an undated postcard.

In 1905, Dozier was elected an Associate of the American Institute of Architects (AIA), only the third woman to be accepted into the organization.²³ Dozier’s election directly led to the establishment of the Atlanta chapter of the AIA,²⁴ which later became AIA Georgia.

As T.H. Morgan recounted, a minimum of five AIA associates were required to form an AIA chapter, and Dozier, along with Harry Leslie Walker, became the fifth and sixth architects in the city elected as associates, prompting the chapter’s organization.²⁵

During her life, Dozier’s work was barely acknowledged by the press — in either Atlanta or Jacksonville. The handful of news stories written about her often conveyed a tone of curious skepticism, if not outright ridicule.

The following article, published in The Atlanta Constitution in 1902, is the first of just a few that were written about Dozier during her time in Atlanta, and it’s as sexist and condescending as it gets.

Dozier had been in practice less than 2 years, and the reporter (obviously male) depicted her interest in architecture as some girlish lark before settling into marriage, claiming that she “makes plans for a future fair with promise, where she may realize a woman’s dreams of ease and mental and domestic pleasure, surrounded by the friends she loves—nature and children and dumb things.”

Maybe that’s what Dozier told the reporter to keep him happy, but she clearly had other ideas for herself.

This Georgia Woman Stands High in Profession of Architecture

“Of all the branches of work into which women are entering there is none which shows so small a percentage of the really successful as that of architecture, and this is particularly true in the south. Two reasons deter the young woman casting about for something upon which to settle. In the first place, it is hard work; in the second, there is the probability of marriage—the state few on the sunny side of twenty-five or thirty could be brought to regard as anything but the ultima thule to which woman existence tends. And when one there is who from choice enters seriously upon a real profession the world might as well see at once, what sooner or later it will have to see, that she will succeed.

When Miss Henrietta C. Dozier entered as apprentice in an architect’s office she set herself to work as a man does—not simply to bridge over a year or two until the time when she would marry—she began at the beginning and held on to the finish. A year of apprenticeship was followed by two at Pratt Institute; then after some months in New York she went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, remaining four years. Coming south, she opened an office in Jacksonville, Fla., where she was in business six months, but in compliance with solicitations from friends in Atlanta decided to remove to this place, where she is permanently located and established, doing business with a man’s understanding and knowledge and a woman’s thoroughness and regard for detail.

Architecture is peculiarly suited to woman from the fact that her ideas on the requirements of a house are more practical than those of a man. Too, if she has first an all-round knowledge of mechanics her artistic instinct will serve her well. Miss Dozier, realizing what a woman wants and knowing how to go about having it, has built her own house—a unique and picturesque cottage, modern and complete, and meeting her needs as nobody else could have planned for her.

Here, in her hours of recreation, she enjoys with her mother and sister the sweetness of home, and makes plans for a future fair with promise, where she may realize a woman’s dreams of ease and mental and domestic pleasure, surrounded by the friends she loves—nature and children and dumb things.

Miss Dozier, like Dorothy Manners, has “the generations” back of her. Her forbear, Thomas Smith, of South Carolina, was landgrave in 1663, or there abouts, and a long line of ancestors have bequeathed to this young woman the intrepid spirit which no mere circumstance can daunt, and placed in her slender hand the key which unlocks every door—a will that brooks no thwarting.

As an architect she is a success; she has mastered her profession and she makes it pay.²⁶

References
1. Wells, John E. and Dalton, Robert E. The South Carolina Architects, 1885-1935: A Biographical Dictionary. Richmond, Virginia: New South Architectural Press (1992), p. 42. ↩︎
2. “Uncle Sam And The New Woman.” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 30, 1895, p. 32. ↩︎
3. Allaback, Sarah. The First Women Architects. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press (2008), p. 2. ↩︎
4. “Current Events From A Woman’s Point Of View.” The Atlanta Constitution, December 2, 1894, p. 6. ↩︎
5. “Plans By Fair Hands”. The Atlanta Constitution, November 28, 1894, p. 5. ↩︎
6. “Tiffany Will Be Here.” The Atlanta Journal, November 28, 1894, p. 6. ↩︎
7. “Society”. The Atlanta Journal, March 18, 1893, p. 2. ↩︎
8. Photo credit: Wood, Wayne W. Jacksonville’s Architectural Heritage: Landmarks for the Future. Jacksonville, Florida: University of North Florida Press (1989), p. 9. ↩︎
9. Spotlight: Henrietta Dozier – Jacksonville History Center ↩︎
10. ibid. ↩︎
11. “Atlanta Girl Is Lionized.” The Atlanta Constitution, June 8, 1899, p. ↩︎
12. “Society”. The Atlanta Journal, March 18, 1893, p. 2. ↩︎
13. Parks, Cynthia. “‘Cousin Harry’ Practiced What She Built”. The Florida Times-Union (Jacksonville, Florida), July 18, 1976, p. G-2. ↩︎
14. Weightman, Sharon. “They called her Harry”. The Florida Times-Union (Jacksonville, Florida), July 10, 1994. p. D-4. ↩︎
15. “Society”. The Atlanta Journal, March 18, 1893, p. 2. ↩︎
16. ↩︎
17. Weightman, Sharon. “They called her Harry”. The Florida Times-Union (Jacksonville, Florida), July 10, 1994. p. D-4. ↩︎
18. “The Real Estate Field”. The Atlanta Journal, October 31, 1911, p. 19. ↩︎
19. “Some Personal Mention”. The Atlanta Journal, January 28, 1912, p. L5. ↩︎
20. Chapman, Josephine Wright. “Do Women Architects Underchage?” The Atlanta Journal, November 14, 1903, p. 15. ↩︎
21. Spotlight: Henrietta Dozier – Jacksonville History Center ↩︎
22. “New Federal Reserve Bank Home”. The Sunday Times-Union (Jacksonville, Florida), June 1, 1924, p. 19. ↩︎
23. Weightman, Sharon. “They called her Harry”. The Florida Times-Union (Jacksonville, Florida), July 10, 1994. p. D-4. ↩︎
24. Morgan, Thomas H. “The Georgia Chapter of The American Institute of Architects”. The Atlanta Historical Bulletin, Volume 7, No. 28 (September 1943): pp. 89-90. ↩︎
25. ibid. ↩︎
26. “This Georgia Woman Stands High In Profession of Architecture”. The Atlanta Constitution, October 12, 1902, p. 6. ↩︎
January 10, 2026
Greenville County Courthouse (1918) – Greenville, South Carolina
P. Thornton Marye. Greenville County Courthouse (1918). Greenville, South Carolina.¹ ² ³

Bay on the east facade of the Greenville County Courthouse

Looking at the Greenville County Courthouse from the southeast

Door and pediment on the south elevation of the Greenville County Courthouse

Cornice and columns on the east facade of the Greenville County Courthouse

Architrave on the east facade of the Greenville County Courthouse

References
1. “Atlanta Architect Honored.” The Atlanta Constitution, June 13, 1915, p. 12 B. ↩︎
2. “Invitation For Proposals.” The Greenville Daily News (Greenville, South Carolina), November 21, 1915, p. 6. ↩︎
3. “First Court In New Court House”. The Greenville Daily News (Greenville, South Carolina), March 26, 1918, p. 5. ↩︎
January 9, 2026
Relic Signs, Mapped
Okefenokee Swamp Park entrance sign. Photograph by Gene Aiken from an undated postcard.

Year by year, more disappear: the quirky, colorful business signs of the 20th century that once littered the United States with their kitschy, eye-catching designs, luring visitors to stores, restaurants, lounges, theaters, shopping centers, tourist attractions, and, of course, motels.

The synthesis of folk art tradition and cold-hard commercialism, these signs followed the growth of the American highway system, and were perhaps the most prominent symbols of the cynical and disposable culture of convenience and impulse that wholly consumed the United States in the 20th century.

The signs functioned as both advertisements and wayfinding tools, and could never be classified as high art: even in their prime, they were widely criticized as crass and unsightly markers to rampant consumerism and unfettered sprawl. Yet one era’s trash becomes another era’s treasure, and these signs attracted wider appreciation as their numbers began to dwindle.

Hand-painted, two-dimensional signs on the outer walls of buildings were a ubiquitous feature of the American landscape starting in the late 19th century, but by the 1920s, sign-making reached new heights and three-dimensional form with “sky signs”, now known as scaffold signs.

Sky sign on Biltmore Hotel (1924). Atlanta.

Often perched atop towering hotels or other tall buildings in city centers, these machine-produced signs were attached to steel scaffolding and lit by electricity, still a novelty in many places.

As Americans began driving the first automobiles across a patchwork network of highways, sky signs served as bright, beckoning beacons that could be easily spotted from miles around.

Neon lights also debuted in the 1920s, and their distinctive glowing colors quickly became a standard feature of commercial signage, seemingly overnight.

Used by everyone from mom-and-pop shops to department stores, by the 1940s, neon signs were synonymous with nightlife entertainment and what is now referred to as Streamline Moderne architecture.

Clubs, diners, and movie theaters of the era often prominently incorporated neon elements into their sleek, curvaceous designs inspired by an increasingly mobile world of planes, trains, and automobiles.

Del-Mar Motel (1955). Valdosta, Georgia. Designed by Joe Bright.

The creative zenith of signmaking emerged with the advent of the Interstate Highway System in the mid-20th century.

Far-out, futuristic signs inspired by the Space Age and the Atomic Era dominated in the 1950s and 60s, today closely associated with Googie architecture, which originated in southern California and spread unevenly throughout the country.

Popular elements of Googie-derived signs included:
- starbursts
- shooting stars
- exploding atoms
- orbiting satellites
- giant boomerangs
- oversized arrows
Many signs of the era were more down-to-earth in their inspiration: roadside business signs often incorporated symbols that were evocative of their specific locale or region — a chomping alligator on the entrance sign for Okefenokee Swamp Park in Georgia, for instance (pictured above).

Round Up Motel. West Yellowstone, Montana.

Other signs were more exotic in flavor, capitalizing on the Tiki culture that emerged in the White middle class following World War II, using symbols and typefaces that were stereotypically Polynesian, Hawaiian, or Pan-Asian.

Typically designed by local sign makers, vernacular roadside signs were often used as distinctive focal points for structures that were otherwise unremarkable and interchangeable — see one hole-in-the-wall motel, for instance, and you’ve seen them all. It was the sign that was memorable, not the building.

Vernacular signs were already falling out of fashion when Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, a husband-and-wife architectural team from Philadelphia, galvanized the architectural world with the 1972 publication of Learning from Las Vegas, in which they praised vernacular road signs for their “architecture of communication over space”¹ and presented them as a legitimate art form worthy of analysis.

Venturi and Scott Brown accused architects of designing to suit “their own particular upper-middle-class values, which they assign to everyone” and admonished them to “gain insight from the commonplace”.²

Yet even as architects began drawing inspiration from them, by the 1970s, vernacular roadside signs were steadily supplanted by standardized signs that became more subdued, less conspicuous, and thoroughly homogenous.

Weiss Liquors (circa 1966). Nashville, Tennessee.

Today, roadside signs from the mid-20th century are nearly extinct, often regulated out of existence by restrictive sign ordinances or demolished when their associated businesses close or succumb to redevelopment. Those that remain are either in a state of decay or have been well-maintained and, in some cases, skillfully restored.

If you’re hunting for relic roadside signs in the United States, there are a few good places to start:
1. Neglected or run-down urban neighborhoods or rural towns.
2. Nostalgic destinations such as long-running local restaurants, theaters, and stores, or tourist areas near beaches, mountains, or national parks.
3. Shopping centers built in the 1950s, 60s, or 70s that have retained elements of their original design.
These relic signs are quaint reminders of a time when the appeal of travel lay in the freedom of its uncertainty and little surprises, when Americans weren’t so embedded in the illusion of control, merely navigating from one planned destination to the next on routes prescribed by machine, coddling our consumed minds with the bland promise of comfort, safety, and familiarity.

Or, perhaps, that time never existed at all.

The map below charts the location of every vintage sign I’ve photographed so far, with accompanying images. Many of the signs have since been removed.

References
1. Venturi, Robert; Scott Brown, Denise; Izenour, Steven. Learning from Las Vegas, Revised Edition: The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press (1977). ↩︎
2. ibid. ↩︎
January 8, 2026
High Museum of Art Expansion (2005) – Atlanta
Renzo Piano Building Workshop with Lord, Aeck & Sargent, Inc. High Museum of Art Expansion (2005). Midtown, Atlanta.¹ ²

Aluminum panels on the facade of the High Museum of Art Expansion

Looking northwest toward the entrance of the High Museum of Art Expansion

West elevation of the High Museum of Art Expansion

West elevation of the High Museum of Art Expansion

Looking toward the Anne Cox Chambers Wing of the High Museum of Art Expansion

Entrance to the Anne Cox Chambers Wing of the High Museum of Art Expansion

Third-floor gallery in the High Museum of Art Expansion

Skylights in the High Museum of Art Expansion

References
1. High Museum Expansion – RPBW ↩︎
2. Fox, Catherine. “Piano’s Forte”. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, November 4, 2005, p. 1A. ↩︎
January 7, 2026
The Priest’s House (1884) – Atlanta
E.G. Lind. The Priest’s House at Catholic Shrine of the Immaculate Conception (1884). Atlanta.¹ ² ³ ⁴ ⁵

Front porch and entrance of The Priest’s House

First-floor windows on the facade of The Priest’s House

Second-floor window on the facade of The Priest’s House

Terracotta stringcourse on the facade of The Priest’s House

Attic window on the facade of The Priest’s House

Brackets on the facade of The Priest’s House

West elevation of The Priest’s House

References
1. Belfoure, Charles. Edmund G. Lind: Anglo-American Architect of Baltimore and the South. Baltimore, Maryland: The Baltimore Architectural Foundation (2009). ↩︎
2. “Notice to Builders & Contractors”. The Atlanta Constitution, June 25, 1884, p. 5. ↩︎
3. “Building Bits.” The Atlanta Constitution, May 30, 1884, p. 7. ↩︎
4. “The Priest’s House”. The Atlanta Constitution, November 9, 1884, p. 9. ↩︎
5. “A Brilliant Occasion.” The Atlanta Constitution, November 12, 1884, p. 7. ↩︎
January 5, 2026
FMC Tower (2016) – Philadelphia
Pelli Clarke & Partners with BLT Architects. FMC Tower (2016). Philadelphia.¹

References
1. FMC Tower | Pelli Clarke & Partners ↩︎
January 3, 2026
Prayer for the New Year
Pickard Chilton with HKS. Norfolk Southern Headquarters (2022). Atlanta.¹

May the darkness of fear and illusion dissipate;

May the light of grace and truth shine through.

References
1. Norfolk Southern Headquarters | Pickard Chilton ↩︎
January 1, 2026
W.W. Goodrich on Henry W. Grady (1891)
Alexander Doyle. Henry. W. Grady Monument (1891). Atlanta.

The Background

Henry W. Grady (1850-1889) was the editor of The Atlanta Constitution in the 1880s, as well as the originator and chief proselytizer of “The New South” mythology that Atlanta still clings to as gospel.

If anyone in post-Civil War America was unaware of Grady’s conception of the New South, he considered it his life’s mission to indoctrinate them, criss-crossing the United States and preaching his message of a resurgent South in a series of public speeches.

Grady’s big idea was to decrease the Southeast’s economic reliance on agriculture and attract industry to the region with cheap labor, envisioning Atlanta as its epicenter.

The city and mythology soon became synonymous, and Atlanta developed a reputation as a progressive, “wide-awake” metropolis in a region long viewed as backward and rural.

The vision of the New South was anything but progressive, however, and Grady was simply regurgitating the stale promises of capitalism with a Southern twang.

He was also an avowed White supremacist who lamented the region’s “Negro problem,” which is to say, that Black people existed at all. Among some of Grady’s choice remarks on the subject is this subtle proclamation:

But the supremacy of the white race of the South must be maintained forever, and the domination of the negro race resisted at all points and at all hazards, because the white race is the superior race.¹

In other words, the New South was to be built on the same old bullshit as the Old South.

Illustration of the unveiling of the Henry W. Grady Monument, October 21, 1891²

Americans love to deify racist orators, and when Grady suddenly died in December 1889, he was immediately beatified by White Atlantans as some patron saint of the city. A movement quickly grew to erect a monument to him, and in March 1890, a local committee accepted the design for a bronze statue sculpted by Alexander Doyle.³

The Henry Grady monument was unveiled in a lavish public ceremony on October 21, 1891,⁴ which the Constitution predictably covered as if it were the event of the century, claiming that crowds in attendance ranged from 25,000 to 50,000 people,⁵ no doubt greatly exaggerated since the city’s population was less than 70,000 at the time.⁶

A monument to Grady wasn’t enough, however, and for decades the city slapped his name on various streets and buildings, including Grady Memorial Hospital and Grady High School in Midtown. The high school finally dropped his name in 2021,⁷ but the hospital remains “Grady”, and it’s hard to imagine a world in which Atlantans would ever call it anything else.

The Grady monument was erected at the intersection of Marietta and Forsyth Streets, and during the 1906 Atlanta race massacre, it served as an altar for the bodies of three Black men murdered by an angry White mob.

As the Constitution told the story:

One of the worst battles of the night was that which took place around the postoffice. Here the mob, yelling for blood, rushed upon a negro barber shop just across from the federal building.

“Get ’em. Get ’em all.” With this for their slogan, the crowd, armed with heavy clubs, canes, revolvers, several rifles, stones and weapons of every description, made a rush upon the negro barber shop. Those in the first line of the crowd made known their coming by throwing bricks and stones that went crashing through the windows and glass doors.

Hard upon these missiles rushed such a sea of angry men and boys as swept everything before them.

The two negro barbers working at their chairs made no effort to meet the mob. One man held up both his hands. A brick caught him in the face, and at the same time shots were fired. Both men fell to the floor. Still unsatisfied, the mob rushed into the barber shop, leaving the place a mass of ruins.

The bodies of both barbers were first kicked and then dragged from the place. Grabbing at their clothing, this was soon torn from them, many of the crowd taking these rags of shirts and clothing home as souvenirs or waving them above their heads to invite to further riot.

When dragged into the street, the faces of both barbers were terribly mutilated, while the floor of the shop was met with puddles of blood. On and on these bodies were dragged across the street to where the new building of the electric and gas company stands. In the alleyway leading by the side of this building the bodies were thrown together and left there.

At about this time another portion of the mob busied itself with one negro caught upon the streets. He was summarily treated. Felled with a single blow, shots were fired at the body until the crowd for its own safety called for a halt on this method, and yelled “Beat ’em up. Beat ’em up. You’ll kill good white men by shooting.”

By way of reply, the mob began beating the body of the negro, which was already far beyond any possibility of struggle or pain. Satisfied that the negro was dead, his body was thrown by the side of the two negro barbers and left there, the pile of three making a ghastly monument to the work of the night, and almost within the shadow of the monument of Henry W. Grady.

So much for the city too busy to hate.

The Grady statue still stands at the intersection of Marietta and Forsyth Streets in Downtown Atlanta, but it’s easy to overlook. In June 1996, it was moved 10 feet from its original spot for greater visibility,⁸ but it remains surrounded on both sides by a canyon of glass-and-steel buildings that cast the monument in near-constant shadow — that’s probably for the best.

When the statue was unveiled in 1891, W.W. Goodrich felt the need to offer his thoughts on the subject — because of course he did — with remarks to the Constitution that should be viewed with great skepticism, given his well-noted propensity for lying.

In the following article excerpt, Goodrich claims to have had “several conversations” with Grady — “in his sanctum,” no less –and acts as if the two men were intimate friends.

Let’s do some quick math here: Goodrich came to Atlanta in September 1889,⁹ and Grady died on December 23, 1889, after a month-long bout of pneumonia, during which time he also took extended trips to New York and Boston.¹⁰

Would a no-name newcomer from California have been able to engage in “several conversations” with Grady in under 3 months? I have serious doubts.

Here, Goodrich also compares Grady to Abraham Lincoln, with whom he was apparently quite enamored [see also: “The President and the Bootblack“], sharing an apocryphal tale about Lincoln that he undoubtedly pulled straight from his ass.

And on that note, we won’t be hearing much more of Goodrich’s bullshit for a while. Thank God.

Article Excerpt:

All during the day, and away into every night, there is a group around the Grady statue. Yesterday it was surrounded all day by men, women and children, who were studying the bronze figure. As late as 10 o’clock last night there were at least twenty people in front of the statue, gazing at it.

Mr. W.W. Goodrich, the architect, says:

Looking upon that face in living bronze, studying its points of character, the many thoughts of the several conversations I had with him pass in review before my memory. Shortly after making Atlanta my home, I called upon Mr. Grady in his sanctum. Always courteous, cordial, and painstaking in a marked degree, to make a stranger at home, in his beloved city, was he to every one. He never referred to the past, but that he predicted from out of it would arise in the south, in this favored region, the grandest lives of our future republic. He predicted that the mighty forces of science would hereabout establish those appliances of labor that would elevate the new south above her most rosy anticipations.

“And why not,” said Mr. Grady to me once, “about us all are the minerals, inexhaustible, that are used in manufacturing enterprises. Our fields give us the raw material for our spindles to manipulate, our firesides are aglow with fuel from nearabout, our food products can all be raised here, our climate cannot be excelled, our transportation facilities place us speedily in all the markets of the world. Again, the active hands behind all this are young men who were boys after the surrender. From bank presidents down to humble vocations, our young men are the leading spirits.”

And whilst I listened to the speeches of Mr. Clark Howell and his co-laborers, at the unveiling ceremonies last Wednesday, I could not help but think of Mr. Grady’s remarks: “Our young men are back of it all, and are the active hands in the forwarding of all this remarkable prosperity and progress.”

Atlanta is peculiarly a city of young men. Their influence is felt on every hand, in every vocation, trade or profession. The brainy young men are back of it all, of all this wonderful and real prosperity, of all this great progress, and the future greatness of our city can be ascribed to the young men. And Mr. Grady was a young man. His addresses show the fire of youth with the mannered culture of experience. The young men of the new south are her bone and sinew, the coming giants in the political arena. The star of empire, for solid practical government, that government of the people, for the people, and by the people, that government of genuine Americans for Americans, is here in the south. From my observation, I verily believe there is more Americanism in the south than in all the rest of the country put together; and more love of American institutions for what they have been, for what they are and for what they will be in the future.

Mr. Grady admired the character of Lincoln, and with emotion remarked that the south lost her best friend when Mr. Lincoln died. He stated that Washington and Lincoln were the two greatest men of the world. And Governor Hill, in his remarkable eulogy of Mr. Grady, at the unveiling ceremonies, likened Washington, Lincoln and Grady as the three greatest men of our country.

Having occasion to visit Philadelphia during the early part of the war, Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Seward were in a car with several distinguished confederate soldiers on parole. These gentlemen were personally known to Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Seward, and as they chatted together in a most cordial manner, one of the confederate officers said: “Mr. President, what think you of the war?” Grasping the subject instantly, Mr. Lincoln asked:

“General, what do you think of the old flag?” The general’s color instantly turned and he did, not answer. Rising from his seat across the aisle he paced up the car and back to Mr. Lincoln’s seat and finally replied: “Right there was the south’s mistake.” “Yes,” said Mr. Lincoln, “had the south come north with the old flag, there would have been no war.”

I asked Mr. Grady is he had ever heard of the above conversation. He said that he had from one of the generals who was with Mr. Lincoln at that time. He stated the general’s name, and this same general was a very prominent man in the confederacy, and also stated that Mr. Lincoln’s remark about the old flag, was the truth.

Referring to this conversation, at a subsequent interview, Mr. Grady said: “There as one distinct thought that occurs to me, and that is this, Mr. Lincoln was peculiarly a man of the masses, and not of the classes.” Mr. Grady was a man of the masses, and not of the classes, and therein he was like Mr. Lincoln. His strong position with the masses made his paper, The Constitution, to be read by untold thousands all over the country, who saw in the new south that future of prosperity and progress that was typical in Mr. Grady’s greatness of heart, and of which he was the prime mover and its unflinching champion.¹¹

References
1. Life and Labors of Henry W. Grady. Atlanta: H.C. Hudgins & Co. (1890), p. 186. ↩︎
2. The Atlanta Constitution, October 22, 1891, p. 1. ↩︎
3. “The Grady Monument”. The Atlanta Constitution, March 6, 1890, p. 3. ↩︎
4. “In Living Bronze.” The Atlanta Constitution, October 22, 1891, pp. 1-2. ↩︎
5. ibid. ↩︎
6. Biggest Cities in Georgia – 1890 Census Data ↩︎
7. Midtown High School (Atlanta) – Wikipedia ↩︎
8. “Grady Moved By Olympics”. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, June 14, 1996, p. E1. ↩︎
9. “Comes Here to Live.” The Atlanta Constitution, September 18, 1889, p. 4. ↩︎
10. “Henry Grady Dead!” The Atlanta Constitution, December 23, 1889, p. 4. ↩︎
11. “Etched And Sketched.” The Atlanta Constitution, October 26, 1891, p. 4. ↩︎
December 31, 2025
Relic Signs: Town Motel – Birmingham, Alabama
Town Motel (sign debuted after 1957). 414 3rd Avenue West, Birmingham, Alabama.

It’s hard to nail down a precise date for this fantastic Googie-style sign, but it was likely erected sometime after 1957.

The Town Motel opened in 1951¹ and expanded in 1957,² but newspaper images from both dates show two completely different signs — neither of them was this one.

An undated postcard, pictured below, shows the sign in its original — and much more pristine — condition, noting that the motel was owned and managed by Mr. and Mrs. Charles D. Mitchell and Son, who operated the establishment from 1951 to at least 1960.³

References
1. “Phone Seale Lumber For Loan Information.” Birmingham Post-Herald (Birmingham, Alabama), May 26, 1951, p. 8. ↩︎
2. “Town Motel Again Re-orders From Rhodes-Carroll”. The Birmingham News (Birmingham, Alabama), February 23, 1957, p. 14. ↩︎
3. Polk’s Birmingham (Jefferson County, Alabama) City Directory 1960. Richmond, Virginia: R.L. Polk & Co., Publishers (1960). ↩︎
December 30, 2025
Fourth Ward (2023) – Atlanta
Olson Kundig Architects. Fourth Ward (2023). Old Fourth Ward, Atlanta. ¹

References
1. Olson Kundig uses glass bridge to connect office building’s near Atlanta’s BeltLine – dezeen ↩︎
December 28, 2025