Ponce @ Church circa 1982
Decatur Metro | November 9, 2011 | 8:57 am
Udog sent in these two excellent photographs that he took at the corner of Ponce and Church back in 1982.
I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a better pic of the Hotel Candler! First off, I’m not sure I ever realized how large it was.
I think he photoshopped George Harrison and John Lennon from the Abbey Road album cover into the pedestrian crossing in the bottom photo.
These are great photographs. You can see the hobby shop location up from the Candler Hotel on Ponce where we used to race slot cars as kids.
Thanks for that memory Tom. I remember visiting that hobby shop with the slot car track when i first moved to decatur.
Is there any way we could get the power lines in the COD run through the sewer system/underground and get rid of all those hideous telephone poles… especially on Ponce?
Most folks visually tune them out now-a-days but really look at them the next time you drive down Ponce. They are a hot spaghetti mess!
Where on Ponce are you talking about? Downtown does have buried utilities.
It’s not quite as simple as putting power lines in the sewer. They need dedicated conduit in the ground and everything has to be rated for fairly high voltage – I’m guessing on the order of 4000 volts for distribution systems, plus you have to also provide underground service to each customer, transformers, etc. This whole subject also comes up every time there’s an ice storm and the answer is that it is very expensive to build and maintain.
I think the powerlines at the intersection of Commerce and E. Ponce look like the top photo, and its a bit of a mess from there all they way out to Sycamore, Sams Crossing, and beyond (although I am less worried about the less residentail part of Ponce after Sams Crossing).
I have seen the discussions on why we “can’t” bury them… I was just wondering if there we any ideas on how we “could”.
You are correct about downtown having (mostly) buried powerlines… wonderful isn’t it?!?
Years ago, R. Crumb did a series of magnificent drawings called the “Uglification of America” that shows how rural areas gave way to towns, gave way to cities, complete with awful looking power lines. I say bury them (the power lines, not the cities).
I started working at Micks in 1989 and all that corner in the top picture was gone. What a big change! I like the old buildings more. The seat cover place was there for a long time. Leon’s did a good job saving the essence of the building.
Great photos – too bad we lost the Candler Hotel.
These are great photos that predate my move to Decatur, though everything in the bottom picture is consistent with my memory of Decatur in 1994. I’ve got some questions about the other. The Candler Hotel appears to have signage on the corner that reads “The Clairmont Building.” Is this right? Was the Candler Hotel a functioning hotel until its demise? Also, I had thought that there was a movie theater in the building between what is now Parker’s and what was then Hobby House, but it sure doesn’t look like one. Does anyone recall what was there?
The Hotel Candler, sounds more elegant than Candler Hotel, had transitioned to apartments in it’s latter days, more like an SRO. Mostly low income. I don’t know the year it ceased to be a Hotel. Before it was sold to Pope & Land and demolished, it was owned by Decatur’s own Larry Morris, DHS football star, GT All American and 1963 MVP in the NFL championship game before there was a Super Bowl. It was built and owned by Walter Candler, son of Asa Candler, in 1929 and expanded in 1949. He later lived in the penthouse after he moved out of Lullwater at Emory.
The building next to Parker’s was Woolworths, later to become Peacock Office Supply. Next to Woolworths was the DeKalb Theater which closed in 1947 I think. For six years there were two movie theaters on the Square. The theater was converted into a J.C. Penney’s and later into the Hobby House so the Hobby House and theater was the same building. I don’t remember when the JCP closed.
thanks for sharing the pictures and all of the details.
The Hotel Candler reminds me of a smaller version of the building at the corner of Ponce and Highland – which used to be a hotel as well.
The Hotel Candler was always a somewhat mysterious building to me as I was growing up. Passed it every day walking to Decatur High (yes, we used to walk!). Never understood who stayed there… was it a regular “hotel”.. or was it more of a long term stay kind of place? Were there any businesses located in the building?
I did like the look of the building, one of the better looking structures in old Decatur.
Photos like this are really neat but also depressing. A beautiful old building, probably solid as a rock and built to last many years, is torn down and replaced with a modern, ugly office building. For the life of me, I cannot understand why so many modern buildings are so much uglier than the buildings they replaced. Did they care more about appearances back then? Or is the bottom line more important today, so we make things cheaper and uglier?
The demolition of the Candler probably would not have happened in today’s climate. We are much more in tune to historic preservation than we were 25 years ago.
While I agree that the Candler was an attractive building, it might have been an unsuitable structure to convert to modern use. If, as I suspect, it was a warren of small rooms… with no provisions/space for central HVAC and wiring.. it would have been a difficult and expensive conversion. I don’t think it would have been competitive as a hotel.
The current replacement is relatively street friendly (store fronts) and attractive… with the exception of the butt ugly parking lot facade (or lack thereof) facing Church St. I consider the current building one of the better efforts at in-town construction in the context of when it was built.
I lament the Hotel Candler as well, but as Steve says, things and thinking was different back then. Just 20 years prior to this, the entire Beacon Hill neighborhood was plowed under to build the high school. The Ponce de Leon school was knocked over to build the Post Office. All of West Ponce was bulldozed in hopes of bringing in a developer. I’m not going to chain myself to One Town Center either, but we should at least be thankful that it’s making sweet sidewalk love to the street and isn’t a giant parking lot. Also, hopefully the new retail initiative at this building will make it a bigger contributor to our downtown streetscape.
As for why things are uglier now, I say it’s the long slide of innovation and the availability of inexpensive materials. The innovation is great, but there’s always a trade-off.
“Also, hopefully the new retail initiative at this building will make it a bigger contributor to our downtown streetscape.”
Any links to more info about this?
I’m gonna do everything I can to work the phrase “making sweet sidewalk love to the street” into everyday deliberations on growth nationwide!
Please do.
I was pretty sure that DM smoked pot daily and this phrase pretty much confirms that 😉
I also like these older buildings, and it’s a shame we tore them down so indiscriminately.
That said, it looks like this property had some significant maintenance issues: note the missing balustrades above the front porch entrance, and the peeling paint there and on the cornice work at the top of the main structure. One can assume there were probably maintenance problems inside as well.
My best guess is the bloom had faded on this old beauty and it was, at the time of this photograph, a relatively inexpensive extended stay hotel. Had it been preserved and restored to become a nicer property, it could have been a great asset for tourism revenue today.
Indeed. One of the things I’ve heard over the years was that by the 1980s, it was in really bad shape. Hard to believe it was irreversible, but, whatevs.
Yeah, but was there a bodacious blonde in the basement bashing beer cans with her boobs?
You’re confusing the Candler with the Clermont on Ponce in Midtown.
No confusion on my part. If the Candler had a Blondie, it was worth saving. That’s all.
+1
Good Lord, it was a dump long before it was torn down. Not everything old is desirable to renovate.
That’s true, and in the 80’s I’ll bet the city could hardly have imagined the Decatur we know today–it really is a Cinderella story, but one only the most visionary of developers could have imagined in order to justify restoring it at that time.
But, the same could probably have been said about the Georgian Terrace Hotel at Peachtree and North in the 80’s. It was in very rough shape, and look at it now.
Before:
http://dlib.gsu.edu/cgi-bin/getimage.exe?CISOROOT=/ajc&CISOPTR=946&DMSCALE=79.26024&DMWIDTH=600&DMHEIGHT=600&DMX=0&DMY=0&DMTEXT=&REC=5&DMTHUMB=1&DMROTATE=0
After:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_OAmKtbgg55s/SjeE15FD4bI/AAAAAAAABMA/iEz0m6kl-eo/s320/georgian+terrace+lobby.jpg
Actually, what we see today started in the 70’s. The Hotel block is pretty much as envisioned in the 1982 Downtown Development Plan. Many other parts of the plan were terrible and we are better off than if they had been built.
I love the mattress beside the trash can in the foreground
Decatur: Come for Lunch, Stay for a Nap
I seriously just LOL’ed at this…well done!
I was surprised no one commented on the two little ladies on the corner, Clarabelle and Jennifer Morrison from Mayberry. http://mayberry.wikia.com/wiki/Clarabelle_Morrison
Wow. This makes me sad.
Don’t be sad. This intersection is much more viable and vibrant now than it was in 1982. Not even close.
As Rod T says, just look at the mattress and overflowing trash can at the corner in the picture. Are there even sidewalks in front of what is now Leons? Ponce had not yet gone on a “road diet.”
Who knows whether that building could have been saved and repurposed into something valuable? But it wasn’t and I think what we’ve got now is much better than what we had.
As a teenager,I made occasional trips on MARTA to the library in Decatur during the time period (roughly) of the pictures. Decatur is so much more attractive now than then (and aesthetics are only a small part of the improvement). Sometimes I find it hard to believe I’m in the same city that is in those pictures. One reason Atlanta in general is not big on historic preservation is that much of our history is ugly–that doesn’t mean some buildings are not worth saving, but nostalgia for the past is not likely to arouse much support for preservation in most cases.
Well, that, and the fact that Sherman pretty much burned down all the buildings that would now be deemed “historic”…
So the Hotel Candler was in roughly the same spot as Decatur Diner / Noodle now? Or am I turned around?
I was trying to do a corner by corner comparison on Google Maps — although that’s now out of date too.
it was across the street from Leon’s
I can see the wry smile on your rooster face there Rick. More precisely, Annabelle, it was where the Town Center office building is – caddy-corner from Decatur Diner, and yes, across PONCE from Leon’s.
heh, you overestimate my cleverness, Warren.
thanks for the clarification.
#bawk!
One- Great call on Hobby Lobby…there is a snapshot of watching little model cars race in that place buried in my young childhood memory.
Two- Another snap shot is of the Candler Hotel getting razed with a wrecking ball. I remember thinking that was sooo cool.
Three- I think so folks are missing the point…without razing that hotel, it’s possible Decatur never makes the turn back. That place was a dump. I feel like there was always danger associated with it…just a feeling from my childhood of you aren’t allowed across the street from the Jewel drug store…
It’s just a building. It’s going to be dust again at some point…enjoy it while you can…but I promise Decatur was better served building the new office bldg than keeping that hotel.
Just curious: Why were these photos taken back then? (if Udog cares to explain).
I started taking the photos during the construction of the Marta Station in 1976. The loss of many historical buildings during the Marta construction was eye opening and maddening (another story), and I wanted a record of the buildings still standing. The 1982 Downtown Development Plan identified the Hotel Candler block as the first site to build two new office buildings, a hotel and parking deck and there was a serious developer on board. I saw the writing on the wall.
DM, thanks for publishing these photos.
Udog, thanks for sharing them with us. I would love to see any other street documentary type photos like this that you would care to share with us….and I imagine I’m not alone in saying that!
With your blessing, I’d love to put these up on the Atlanta Time Machine website, along with any other treasures you have tucked away! Thanks,
I’m surprised no one has mentioned the Square Table.