Midway Elementary School in DeKalb County, Georgia was built in 1956 and designed by John Portman (1924-2017), a decade before he achieved fame for his soaring atrium hotels, of which Atlanta’s Hyatt Regency Hotel (1967) is the prototype.
Midway School was the first of many school buildings Portman designed in and around Atlanta through the 1980s. Most still stand, and most are unremarkable — the casual observer would never guess they were from the same firm that produced many of Atlanta’s landmark towers. Look closely though, and you’ll find they share the same core concept.
Born and raised in Atlanta, Portman made millions off the very Atlanta idea that instead of solving the problems of a dysfunctional city, you could just turn your back and pretend they don’t exist.
This idea was fundamental in Portman’s development of Peachtree Center in Downtown Atlanta, consciously designed to present blank, faceless, hostile exteriors to the person on the street, while concealing dramatic, cavernous (and privately-controlled) spaces for customers inside.
Portman replicated this concept for San Francisco’s Embarcadero Center, the Westin Bonaventure hotel in Los Angeles, Renaissance Center in Detroit, and the New York Marriott Marquis hotel — among many other large-scale projects — enjoying widespread acclaim from the late 1960s to the mid-1970s as a master of urban renewal.
By the 1980s, however, Portman’s designs fell out of favor when it became apparent that they ultimately destroyed the life and fabric of cities. Atlanta suffered the worst — its center remains a hollow void.
You can see the beginnings of Portman’s inward focus in his early work like Midway School. The solid brick walls at the front of the building seal off the interior from the outside world — looking in the narrow clerestory windows, you only glimpse the ceiling.
The courtyard spanned by beams is particularly notable, as Portman would repeat this design in later projects like the Dana Fine Arts Building (1965) in nearby Decatur. There, he lined the courtyard with brick walls, effectively creating an exterior room. Two years later, the courtyard design evolved into the landmark Hyatt atrium.