The Victorian in Modern Atlanta -- Central Presbyterian

An old English parish church plunked down in the middle of chaotic, modern Atlanta? Definitely an unusual sight but Central Presbyterian came by its uniqueness very honestly. It grew from the creative vision of English born and trained Edmund George Lind, who had an extensive background in church architecture long before he came to Atlanta in 1882. He had seen many of these parish/Gothic churches in England and had already designed several during his long practice in Baltimore (1)

Born to Swedish immigrant parents in London, England in 1829, Lind gave up the study of law to take up architecture at the Government School of Design at Somerset House in 1847. While there, he learned architectural drawing from C. M. Richardson and watercolor painting from R. Redgrave of the Royal Academy. After two years, he was "articled" to architect John Blore of London for three years. From 1852 to 1855, he worked in architectural firms in his native city and in Yorkshire. Perhaps in pursuit of greater freedom of expression and design opportunities, the young architect emigrated to the United States in 1855. (2)

Lind settled in Baltimore and was soon working for the noted architect N. G. Starwether on the First Presbyterian Church. Except for his decade long stay in Atlanta from 1882 to 1893, Lind made Baltimore his home. Among his most important works there were the Masonic Temple, Farmers' and Planters' Bank, Franklin Square Presbyterian Church, Memorial Episcopal Church, the Savings Bank, and the magnificent Italianate country estate of Guilford. Most significantly perhaps, he designed the "fabulous library of the Peabody Institute" with its impressive reading room surrounded by five soaring interior tiers of books behind iron balconies. (3)

In the middle years of the nineteenth century, the profession of architecture was in a formative state -- an infant profession in terms of organization, standards, education and even members. Lind was a leading figure in the field and was one of the first members of the brand new American Institute of Architects in 1857. He became a fellow of the AIA in 1870 and founded the Baltimore Chapter in 1871, serving two terms as its president. He also served as vice-president of the national AIA in the 1870s. (4)

Lind's practice extended to Washington, D.C., Virginia, Delaware, West Virginia, and into eastern North Carolina in the 1860s and 1870s. He was distinguished enough to serve on the "commission of experts to examine and report on the condition of the Washington Monument" as well as assistant supervising architect of the United States under President U. S. Grant. In the latter post, he designed the United States custom house and post office in Mobile, Alabama and undoubtedly traveled widely in the South. (5) Chances are good he came through Atlanta on these travels.

Despite what appears to have been a very successful, 25 year career in Baltimore, Lind moved his practice to the emerging capital of the New South in 1882. The main reason might have been his health. According to Charles Belfoure, Lind contracted tuberculosis and was advised to move to a warmer climate. (6) Also, at this time, Atlanta was entering a boom period following the successful International Cotton Exposition of late 1881. There was a definite need for skilled architects in the city as well as the lower South as a whole. (7)

Shortly after arriving in his new home, Lind's wife died of typhoid fever which must have both devastated him and given him second thoughts as to the healthfulness of Atlanta. (8) It also did not auger well for his practice which, in fact, never reached anywhere near the heights attained with the prestigious commissions he had enjoyed in Baltimore and Washington. He had many projects in Atlanta, the rest of Georgia, and even in Alabama, Florida and South Carolina but they were small scale for the most part. Central Presbyterian was his grandest, most visible design work during his deep South sojourn. (9)

This gently imposing church just across Washington Street from the state capitol, which was built immediately after Central Presbyterian was completed, would serve as his grand legacy. With a facade of light-colored Kentucky limestone and sides of matching colored brick, it gives a sense of coolness even on the hottest southern days. At three stories and with a steeply towering slate roof, it is certainly imposing without being austere, overpowering or grandly forbidding. Double Gothic arched doorways topped by equally large Gothic windows and a tracery filled oculus in the tall parapetted gable give the main facade a certain majesty. Small pyramidal roofed ventilating towers on the roof's ridge line, however, soften any feel of grandiosity.

The same can be said for the truncated tower on the south side of the church and the short belltower on the north. The latter may well be Lind's great triumph here. It rises squarely to the base of the front gable but has a variety of horizontal courses, buttresses, pointed arches and an elliptical window to give it added visual interest. It then narrows with shaped, short columns beside stone louvers before the slender pyramidal roof topped with a finial cross. Belfoure states that it is "far simpler than in most of his churches." (10) This homely but interesting tower keeps the whole creation grounded while maintaining the overall feel of a simple parish church set down in the middle of a major city.

Other examples of Lind's work have largely disappeared from Atlanta. Just behind Central Presbyterian stands the rectory of the nearby Shrine of the Immaculate Conception The simple depot and the Queen Anne cottage of Milton Candler (both in Decatur) remain although his Decatur Presbyterian Church was demolished in 1950. The beautiful Mary Willis Library in Washington, Georgia and the Gwinnett County courthouse in Lawrenceville still stand. (11)

The wonderful cluster of the Shrine (designed by William Parkins in 1869), Central Presbyterian, the rectory, the Georgia Freight Depot (designed by Max Corput in 1868) and the capitol (Edbrooke & Burnham) provide a rare group of Victorian era buildings with the churches in strikingly different Gothic styles. The capitol provides a neo-classical interpretation from the time and the freight depot an Italianate design to go with a pleasing combination of Gothic and stick styling in the rectory. Surrounded by these buildings, a viewer with a little imagination might imagine himself back in a world of horse-drawn streetcars, hugely bustled women, gentlemen in frock coats and the loud rattle and clangs of trains coming and going from the long gone Union Passenger Depot, which was just next door. (13) This is surely a fine legacy for Lind and his peers.

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(1) Charles Belfoure, Edmund George Lind: Anglo-American Architect of Baltimore and the South (Baltimore, 2009), 33-35 & 43-47.

(2) "Obituaries, E. G. Lind, F.A.I.A," AIA Quarterly Bulletin (April 1, 1909 - July 1, 1909), 130.

(3) "Obituaries, E. G. Lind," 130; Nikolaus Pevsner, A History of Building Types (Princeton, N.J., 1976), 104; Mills Lane, Architecture of the Old South (Savannah, 1985), 218; Belfoure, 63-81; Correspondence with James T. Wollin , Maryland architect and Lind researcher, in the possession of the author.

(4) "Obituaries, E. G. Lind," 131.

(5) Richard Funderburke, "An Architect for the New South: The Atlanta Years of Edmund G. Lind, 1882-1893," The Georgia Historical Quarterly, Vol. LXXXI # 1 (Spring 1997), 30-31; Belfoure, 48-62, 99-106, 165-185 (E. G. Lind's project list printed in Belfoure).

(6) Belfoure, 137.

(7) Funderburke, 31-34.

(8) Belfoure, 137.

(9) "Project List of E. G. Lind" in Belfoure, 180-184. A number of commissions like those for Concordia Hall or the Georgia Military Institute in Georgia were larger than Central Presbyterian but were never built or were built from the designs of other architects.

(10) Belfoure, 143.

(11) Funderburke, 38-40.

(12) Funderburke, 36-37.

(13) Lind left Atlanta in 1893 and died in 1909 (see Belfoure, 163).

The Beginning Was an End

My search for G. L. Norrman began with his sensational death in 1909. It was a shocking event in the age of yellow journalism -- well-known architect and society favorite commits suicide. So began my fascination with one of Atlanta's greatest nineteenth century architects.


The first decade of the twentieth century was drawing to a close in mid-November of 1909 and the city of Atlanta relaxed in the warm weather of an Indian Summer. It was clear and around seventy degrees as Gottfrid Leonard Norrman walked slowly across the lawn of the Majestic Hotel on the east side of Peachtree Street between Ellis and Cain, a few yards from his beloved Capital City Club an a short block from his architectural office in the new Candler Building. Briefly sitting in a rocker on the full length piazza of the elegant hotel, the portly and bearded architect chatted for some minutes with a lady before entering the building and commenting offhandedly to the desk clerk, "Well, I have lost my last hand; I don't suppose I am much good any more."

Going to his room on the third floor, Norrman removed his coat, climbed into his bathtub, placed a Colt 45 derringer to his right temple, and pulled the trigger. First reports indicate that hotel maid Emma Bowers heard the shot and entered the room to discover the body. Three physicians and the hotel manager came immediately but were unable to revive the still living man. Rushed to Presbyterian Hospital on nearby Cain St., he was pronounced dead about two hours later at 5:05 p.m. on November 17. Thus died one of Atlanta's leading citizens and best-known architects; a man who had helped to shape the physical contours and silhouette of his adopted city for almost thirty years and had represented her throughout the southeast from Durham, N.C. to Mobile, Alabama and Jacksonville, Florida.

The shocking suicide of one of the city's elite made front page news in the Atlanta Constituion, the Atlanta Journal and the Atlanta Georgian. Extensive obituaries, highlighted by photographs, summed up the life and career of Godfrey [he had anglicized his name] Norrman. They proclaimed that the Swedish born architect was one of the city's only "first class architects" upon his arrival in 1881, and that his talent and genius were quickly recognized as, "Building after building was erected of his designing." Writing in the Journal, Sidney Ormond would state, "Godfrey L. Norrman did more for art than any man now living in the city of Atlanta. At the same time he came to this city, "Atlanta was a mass of architectural aberrations. Mr. Norrman would have none of this. Examine any of his structures and you will notice that detail of ornament is made subservient to dignity of line and mass." Another writer would state that through his membership in "all the social clubs of the city . . . there was no more popular or better known man in the community." Georgia's leading poet, Frank L. Stanton, composed an ode to his fellow fallen artist:

After the toil -- after the bitter
strife
That is the way of breath,
He, being weary of the ways of
Life,
Challenged the gates of
Death.

He went away: The road seemed
dark and long
And flowerless as the sod;
Yet, in the sorrow, still he heard
a song
Thrilled to the courts of God.

He knew to love mankind --
brother to all.
And through the trend of years
He made in homes where fast
the teardrops fall
A starlight in the tears.

God will be kind to him, and not
unknown
He goes where great dreams
keep
No memory of Life's shadows,
There, alone,
He reaps the rose of Sleep. (1)

The almost five years preceding Norrman's suicide had been difficult ones for the architect. In early January 1905, he had suffered a severe stroke in his personally designed apartment in the Black Building on North Pryor St. Unconscious, he had been rushed to the private sanatorium of his friends and clients, Drs. Hunter Cooper and W. S. Elkin. At the time, Norrman was proclaimed by the Southern Architect and local newspapers to be one of the city's and the entire South's leading architects, citing many examples of his more recent works. While recuperating, and probably to help oversee the on-going construction of the massive First Baptist Churches in Atlanta and Montgomery, Al., which he had designed, Norrman hired John Falkner as a partner. An unknown figure, then and now, Falkner does not appear to have helped greatly in building up the new firm during Norrman's incapacitation, and he never became a recognized architect after the dissolution of the partnership. (2)

Nevertheless, due to his "iron constitution," Norrman was soon on the road to recovery and so was his business. The Southern Architect for April 22, 1905 reported him "looking well" and "again upon the streets." By February 25, it was reported that he would ". . . be able to return to his business in a week or ten days." Although he was in Savannah in November of 1905 to go over his plans for a new school for the Chatham County Board of Education, he did not officially re-open his architectural office until March 1906, still with Falkner as his partner. (3)

By 1909, however, prospects were very bright for Norrman. He formed a new partnership in June with two talented young men, Hal Fitzgerald Hentz and John Neel Reid, who would become two of Atlanta's greatest 20th century architects. Hentz and Reid had come to Atlanta in April 1909 and set up an architectural practice. According to one Reid biographer, the young architects were ". . . fortunate in finding Gottfried Norrman, a well-established Atlanta architect, willing to accept them as partners." Norrman's reputation ". . . enabled his two junior partners to secure their first important commissions." The later careers of Hentz and Reid would prove this to be a wise decision on the part of the now sixty-three year old Norrman and, even in the brief period before his suicide, the firm received many important commissions. (4)

Thus in the fall of 1909, Norrman's prospects were improving greatly and Neel Reid testified at the coroner's inquest that the senior partner of Norrman, Hentz & Reid was generally "of a most cheerful disposition." The problem was a "tiny sore" which appeared on the architect's right hand, the one not impaired by the 1905 stroke. Again according to Neel Reid, Norrman had recently seen his doctor, who had told him the only "cure" was amputation. The thought of complete incapacitation and the end of his career as a designer was obviously unacceptable and the result was suicide. (5)

It certainly appears that Norrman killed himself on the spur of the moment in a state of despair over the diagnosis since Sidney Ormond stated that he was returning to his office from the Majestic when he apparently changed his mind and walked back into his hotel. Also he left no will and the papers in his room were not left in any order. (6)

With this dramatic beginning and end, I begin my tale of the life and career of G. L. Norrman.

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(1) Weather reports, AC, 11/16/09 and 11/17/09; Sidney Ormond, "G. L. Norrman Ends His Life In Room in the Majestic," AJ, 11/17/09, 1; "Architect G. L. Norrman Speeds A Fatal Bullet Through Right Temple," AC, 11/17/09, 1; "Death By Own Hand, Says Coroner's Jury," AC, 11/17/09, 5; The Atlanta Georgian, 11/17/09, 1.

(2) "G. L. Norrman Stricken By Paralysis," AJ, 1/11/05, 1; "Architect Norrman Seriously Ill," Southern Architect and Building News, 1/14/05; "G. L. Norrman Seriously Ill, " AC, 1/12/05, 7; Atlanta City Directory, 1905.

(3) AJ, 1/11/05, 1; "Information from Atlanta Architects," SA, 4/22/05; "G. L. Norrman Is Better; Out On The Streets," AJ, 4/19/05, 9; "Plans For New School Houses," Savannah Morning News, 11/19/05, 5; "Mr. G. L. Norrman Will Resume Business," AJ, 3/4/06, N-3.

(4) "They Are Well Equipped In Their Profession," AC, 6/27/09; Paul Lewis, "Neel Reid, 1885-1926, The Atlanta Historical Bulletin, Vol. XVI # 1(Spring 19710, 10; Catalogue of the First Annual Exhibition of the Architectural Arts League of Atlanta and the Atlanta Chapter of the American Institute of Architects (Atlanta 1910).

(5) AC, 11/18/09, 5

(6) Ormond, AJ, 11/17/09, 1.