Decatur’s Favorite Commercial Building
Decatur Metro | June 5, 2009The latest Decatur Focus arrived in my mailbox yesterday, and in addition to warning me that the Fire Dept would be testing hydrants in June (Yay! Brown water!), the June issue listed all the building projects in town that received Decatur Design Awards this past year.
That got me thinking about the diversity of our city’s commercial building stock. Needless to say, it is unique. While many of our residential areas, like much of metro-ATL, are relatively intact (with the very large exception of Beacon Hill), the commercial districts have been seriously altered over the years.
So, I wonder, is there any consensus on a favorite commercial building? And I think we’ve gotta exclude the Old Courthouse from this discussion just to make it a bit more interesting. Which is your fav and why? I can be old, new, borrowed, blue, whatever.
And no, even though the High House is currently used as office space, I don’t think it qualifies.
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Let’s start with the Masonic Temple. Another would be the old Post Office (Greene’s).
Depeaux
Sharian rug. Maybe our only art deco building
I believe the old Post Office is also technically Art Deco, though it’s not all that obvious.
However, there IS another great Art Deco building just down the street on Church. It is purple and frickin’ awesome. One of my favs.
Well, historically, the most compelling buildings were typically civic in nature, as most of these preferences suggest. But much of what makes for a great town are the everyday background buildings that account(ed) for most of everything else.
So how about two categories: Favorite Civic Building (like the Temple or Post Office or whatnot) and Favorite Everyday Building. I’ll second Steve on the Masonic building for the former and, for everyday, I love the Watkins building and — strangely — I’m even fond of the Fairview Building. It’s such a basic office building, yet it sits on that spot so nicely.
These days, of course, it seems every building wants to be an icon so the distinction is a little different.
I think my favorite everyday building is the old, two-story commercial brick building across from the Depot.
Re Fairview Building: Not so strange at all. I was trying to remember the name of that building so I could weigh in. There’s something so solid, traditional, and nostalgically bourgeois about it. I can remember doing business with my grandmother in buildings like that when I was little.
Re school category: How can it be that Clairemont isn’t being named when one of the reasons it was kept open over Westchester was its quaintness, charm, and historic value! Actually, I find Westchester and Fifth Avenue nostalgic because that’s the era of school buildings that I remember attending—institutional chic! They may not be pretty but they met kids’ needs. Some of the Clairemont and Glennwood classrooms can be small or odd-shaped and hard for teachers to work with.
The original part of the Fifth Avenue School (the part actually facing 5th Avenue not Oakview) is atually a 1920’s-1930’s building that looks very similar to Winnona Park Elementary. So much so that they might even have been built about the same time. Of course, there were several additions (one in the 1950’s-’60’s) and the auditorium built in the ’80s.
How about the purple building over near Twain’s? I’ve always thought that would be the coolest building to have an office in… Anyone know the history of this one?
It is listed in the National Register of Historic Places (as the Blair-Rutland Building) Perhaps the DeKalb History Center could help fill in some details. BTW, it has skylights – the old kind – in the second floor hallway.
I love that building too. Although whatever they put over those skylights in the 60s or 70s that are now sticking up the top of the building sort of ruins it for me. Love the skylights, hate the structures on top of them. I’m sure they serve a purpose, but they detract from the aesthetic.
I’ve actually seen the nomination for the Blair-Rutland building.
From what I remember I think it was built by CT Mutual Life Insurance back in the early 30s.
CML in the 30’s, really? My alma mater! Is there a public website with a seachable database of historic buildings owners or builders, or is that info only available thru records at the History Center?
The list of buildings/districts in the National Register of Historic Places is available on the US Dept of the Interior website. I imagine the detailed nominations for Georgia are available from the Historic Preservation Division of the Ga Dept of Natural Resources.
That’s where my husband’s massage therapist’s office is! I love its lines (if not its color)…
The Old Scottish Rite Hospital in Oakhurst without any doubt!
I’ll vote for three CSD buildings in the civic (if not really commercial) category – Winnona Park ES, Oakhurst ES, and Glennwood Academy. These are classic examples of the great American neighborhood school and the total antithesis of how most districts are building schools now. Unfortunately, most states require at least 10 acres or more for schools, with big loading/unloading areas, and atrocious architecture. These schools fit into their surroundings perfectly, and while the loading and unloading process isn’t exactly smooth as silk each day, things turn out just fine because of the intricate street networks that diffuse traffic.
For an everyday building I vote for the Sweet Melisa’s / Brick Store building. Another classic, unpretentious building that has withstood the test of time and now serves, IMHO, as the heart of downtown that keeps the energy pulsing. (I am definitely biased, though, as my great great grandfather Houston built those stores after he picked up his house/physicians office that was facing the courthouse, turned it around, plopped it down facing Church St. where it still stands today, and built the two retail spaces in its place).
Love the marble facade of Greene’s (which I assume is the old Post Office) and agree with GAK on the elementary schools. Nothing says “community” like the classic red-brick school building surrounded by green grass.
There are a number of them that I really like but one that hasn’t been mentioned is the little one story building at the northeast corner Commerce Drive and Church Street that is occupied by the Hope Clinic. It was built as a doctor’s office.
The Department of Homeland Security watchtower on W Ponce…
(it’s Friday… )
No contest. (Former) BIG H at the corner of Oakview and East Lake.
I have vote for any construction that resembles the school house–somewhere in the midwest–that Laura Ingalls attended school from 1st to 12th grade.
I’ll go with Decatur Pres Church.
I like the 1950 Bradley Observatory building.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/24391992@N00/1879696769/