Sin City on the Hooch -- Atlanta in the Late Victorian Age

Atlanta was known for depravity from its very beginning.  It was a rough railroad and industrial town in antebellum days and the Civil War years with their increased flow of male transients and unattached workers did little to improve that image.  Prosperity and a soberly conservative middle class may have both developed in the latter decades of the nineteenth century but decadence remained a hallmark of the city.

With its ever increasing network of railroads, great fairs and expositions in 1881, 1887 and 1895, often raucous legislative sessions as the state capital after 1868, and a reputation as the southeast's foremost entertainment Mecca, people of all kinds and both races descended on the Gate City of the South seeking fun and a large dose of debauchery.  Not surprisingly, where a need existed and there was money to be made, plenty of enterprising men and women arose to satisfy a huge public demand for liquor, cheap playhouses, drugs and sex.  Although these products and services could be found at various city locales, the epicenter of vice in turn-of-the-century Atlanta was the intersection of Collins and Decatur streets, just steps from the Union Passenger Depot and the elegant salons and ballrooms of the city's leading hotels.  This area was so notorious that the respectable citizens on the northern blocks of Collins St. successfully lobbied to have the street name changed to Courtland in 1886. (1)

Householders on the newly named Courtland shuddered at the thought of once having to say that they lived on Collins St., so well known for its vice industries, especially its houses of prostitution.  The tiny section just south of Decatur St. kept its disreputable name and associations.  The street's name came from James D. Collins, one of Atlanta's leading citizens and major property holder on his namesake avenue.  Collins served as a Fulton County Commissioner as well as president of the Atlanta Exchange and Banking Co. and vice-president of the Collins Brick Co.  Another prominent Atlantan named J. Perry Chisolm also owned houses on Collins, almost all of which were bordellos. (2)

As the city's elite and upper middle class built their homes northward along Peachtree [James Collins lived at 296 Peachtree] Street, Courtland and other roads in that area, the entrepreneurs of vice remained on Decatur and Collins streets.  Even when, in 1893, the city relocated its police department and jail to a massive new facility on Decatur Street, there was little change in the adjacent "tenderloin" district surrounding it.  Between 1892 and 1899, the number of "madames" listed in city directories for the tiny block-long Collins increased from six to nine [one of these was actually on the first block of Courtland].  In 1899, clustered between #'s 3 through 23 on Collins were madames Josie Lovell, Willie Burton, Fannie Price, Madge Burdette, M. Davidson, Nettie McKinley, Blanche Wentworth and Annie Morgan.  Just across Decatur on Courtland Ave. was Madame M. Johnson.  By 1908, the number had increased to ten -- a very crowded little block. (3)

Although these women were the top dealers in flesh with their "girls" securely ensconced in houses, many prostitutes undoubtedly worked the streets and alleys around the area.  There were also large numbers of "single women" along Decatur Street who operated small businesses as dressmakers and lunchroom owners. (4)  It was generally implied that these women offered more than their skills with a needle or an iron skillet which may have been a case of guilt by geographical association.  Arrests records for the 1890s help flesh out the story.  For 1892, the police department reported 79 arrests for individuals "keeping a house of ill fame" along with 16 for "immoral conduct," 25 for "public indecency," and 13 for being a "lewd woman on the streets."  The increase in several of those categories was significant by the 1899 report.  In that year, there were 129 arrests for those "keeping a house of ill fame" and 53 for being a "lewd woman on the streets." (5)  The actual locations for these arrests are not give in the raw, composite numbers reported but the widely known activities around the Decatur and Collins streets intersection leave little room for doubt that many, if not most, were here, just steps outside the doors of the new police department.

As the Victorian Age was drawing to a close in the first decade of the twentieth century and as prohibition seemed more and more likely for Atlanta [it arrived on Jan. 1, 1908], ten "single women" were listed as residents of Collins Street in 1906, two of these being Madge Burdette  at # 21 Collins and Lillian Jacobs.  Sadly the city directory for that year no longer specified these "single women" as "madames," but Burdette and Jacobs had already claimed that title in previous directories.  There was one African-American woman in 1906 named Millie Edwards as well but she might have been a servant rather than a madame.  The 1907 and 1908 directories did list the "madames" and there were ten on Collins Street for both years.  Curiously, the names of these women varied greatly from year to year during these decades which indicates a fairly high turnover with a few constants like the Burtons and Burdette.  (6)

Before jumping to the conclusion, however, that these unattached women with some kind of business along both Decatur and Collins were innocent of vice, it is important to see the true nature of their surroundings.  While there were elegant saloons for the upper crust just next door at the Kimball House Hotel, the city's worst dives, bucket shops and barrooms surrounded the police department at 171-179 Decatur Street.  In a photograph from that era, a saloon is clearly seen directly adjacent.  In 1895, 26 saloons are listed in the

i

Atlanta Police Dept., circa 1895

immediate area.  By 1905 and 1906, this number had jumped to 39 and 38 respectively. Twelve of Atlanta's sixteen pawn shops were also on Decatur. (7)  While saloons were in other areas as well, Atlanta's finest needed only to walk a block or two from their jail doorway to find people to arrest.  In 1892 just before the new headquarters opened, there were 6,554 arrests for being drunk and/or disorderly on the streets.  Six years later with the new headquarters in full operation, the number was 9,407. (8)

Other possible sources for data on vice are public medical reports for the era.  They are only marginally helpful but do give some insights into what must have been a huge problem with alcohol and drugs like opium, morphine and papine.  It was reported in 1907 that opium dens were not unknown in Atlanta.  The Board of Health data only showed three deaths from "alcoholism" for 1893 and only four in 1900.  However, Grady Hospital stated that it treated 24 for "acute or chronic alcoholism" in the latter year.  There were also other addictions for Atlantans to pursue in these years.  City statistics for 1893 and 1900 show ten and 3 deaths respectively from morphine and opium.  Grady treated 15 patients for various forms of non-alcoholic addiction as the twentieth century dawned. (9)

It is doubtful that most addicts received any treatment at all and thus went unreported in any way.  While some obviously were treated at the public hospital which was just one block north of the plentiful saloons and probable "opium dens" of Decatur Street, those persons with money sought cures elsewhere.  Between 1899 and 1905, the number of private sanatoriums discernibly devoted to opium and "whiskey" cures doubled from two to four. (10)   Few of the denizens of Decatur Street's "palaces of sin," however, could afford treatment of any kind and probably died miserable [and unreported] deaths in an age completely devoid of a public safety net.

Even prohibition seems to have failed to blight the vice on Decatur Street.  In a 1909 city council debate over changing the street's name, one councilman said the street was still full of "low near-beer dives," squalid hovels, and "foul fish stalls whose filthy stench is an offense against high heaven . . . ."  Furthermore, Decatur Street was an "eyesore, an unclean and leprous spot upon the face of our fair city . . . ."  (11)  This was more than a year after the advent of prohibition when a low alcoholic "near beer" was still allowed.

One final and very interesting aspect of Atlanta's vice business in the last decades of the Victorian Age centers on race.  In a time when segregation was entering its strictest period, Decatur Street appears to have been very fluid racially.  City directories like that of 1899 show a mixture of white and black women, for instance, as having small businesses in the area. (12)  Also, it is clear from newspaper reports that the blocks surrounding the police headquarters attracted many out-of-town visitors [and surely just as many locals] to its revelries.  According to Franklin Garrett, this had been the case since the 1880s.  An 1896 newspaper article reported that huge crowds of African-Americans descended on Decatur Street for the Fourth of July.  "All early morning trains were well filled with a throng of blacks from different towns about Atlanta," including Griffin, West Point, Marietta, Rome, Macon and Jonesboro.   They "hung about the carshed" [Union Passenger Depot] and feasted on watermelon and "red lemonade" [apparently a cheap alcoholic brew] at "improvised booths" there and along Decatur Street, where "Decatur Street whiskey was as plentiful as water."  The entire police force was kept on duty and at least 80 arrests were made. (13)  Although the Collins Street madames were white, this part of town was clearly one which invited both races to celebrate and party in an atmosphere where race was not so stratified.  For those who might want to escape the highly repressive racial separation of the age, this area of Atlanta obviously provided a welcome safety valve.

Economic factors also were important.  Through licensing fees, taxes, arrest fines, revenues from "vice tourism" like the African-Americans celebrating the Fourth, rental income for buildings, and probably kickbacks and protection money from those illegal "keepers of houses of ill fame" and similar businesses, the city and its elites surely made a lot of money.  When a huge fire destroyed the Markham House Block and its backdoor neighbor, Belle Burton's bordello at # 4 Collins Street and several similar houses nearby, in 1896, a clean-up was suggested.  It was surmised that "Lights From Many Prominent Palaces of Sin May Cease To Twinkle In The Thoroughfare" [Collins Street, that is].  Perry Chisolm and James Collins both said that they might sell their properties but Chisolm hastily added, "It may be, however, that I will be compelled to rebuild houses to be occupied by tenants like those who occupied the old buildings.  It would be impossible to use it for anything else unless the character of the whole street is changed by the removal of the present occupants to some other locality." (14)  As already shown above by the 1899 statistics on the number of bordellos along Collins Street [nine were operating on the block in 1899], the self-policing efforts suggested by the wealthy property owners were either a sham or impossible to fulfill.

By the second decade of the twentieth century, however, other factors were impacting the dens of iniquity in this part of town.  Prohibition and the politics of progressivism aimed, in part at least, at "cleaning up" cities had a dramatic effect on Decatur and Collins streets.  Naturally, all the saloons and other purveyors of alcohol had disappeared in 1908.  The madames remained for a while but historian Harvey Newman states that all the "girls" and their managers had left town by 1913. (15)  The final blow came in 1912 with a new police chief James Beavers and with a report by a formal Vice Commission for the City of Atlanta which condemned the city's "houses of assignation" and urged their repression.  The report concluded that prostitutes were often driven or enticed into "white slavery" by financial need as well as by evil men and women [the madames] in the business.  Perhaps surprisingly for the time, the report deplored the double standard whereby the women were brought down to a "life of shame" and are destroyed while the men who use them "escape" punishment.  "It is not just and this type of man should be severely punished," the authors stated.  Chief Beavers took such reports to heart and inaugurated massive arrests and raids to end prostitution, starting with arrest sweeps of all male and female "loiterers" on late night streets. (16)

Of course, prostitution and other forms of vice did not suddenly disappear from Atlanta.  They did seem to leave Decatur and Collins streets and became less visible or underground.  The madames can no longer be found in city directories, including such well-known ones as Belle Burton and Madge Burdette.  Most probably moved out of town.  At least one madame named Nellie Busbee on Magnolia Street [just off Marietta near Five Points] committed suicide by "thrusting a dagger through her heart," leaving a note blaming Chief Beavers whom she told to "go to hell" since he had closed her "resort" and "there was nothing left for her in life."  There was another report in 1912 that Atlanta's prostitutes were moving to Savannah, Macon, Memphis, New Orleans and other cities. (17)

Both Decatur and Collins streets remain today.  The intersection lies at the heart of the burgeoning Georgia State University with the South Tower of the library replacing the haunts and houses of Victorian Atlanta's famous "mistresses of illicit sex."  Belle and Willie Burton, Madge Burnette, Fannie Price, Lillian Jacobs and the other madames were successful businesswomen but they have largely vanished from city histories despite their notoriety in those last decades of the Victorian Age.  

Richard Dees Funderburke, Phd.    Decatur, Georgia

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(1)  Franklin Garrett, Atlanta and Environs, Vol. II, p. 127.

(2)  Atlanta City Directory 1896 (hereafter ACD), pp. 576 and 560; "Collins Street May Go Dark," Atlanta Journal (hereafter AJ), 5/21/1896, 3.

(3)  ACD 1892, p. 155; ACD 1895, pp. 487 and 161; ACD 1899, p. 154 and p. 115; ACD 1907, p.145; ACD 1908, p. 71.  The cast of madames in 1907 included long time residents Madge Burdette and Lilly Jacobs along with Helen Bertram, Lula Bell, Belle Summers, Gertrude Cartwright, Viola Mayfield, Mamie Leroy, and Effie Dudley.  These were just the managers/owners so there was probably a substantial number of workers in the houses on the block as well.

(4)  ACD 1899, p. 1372.

(5)  Annual Reports, City of Atlanta, Report of the Police Dept. (hereafter Annual Reports), pp. 571-577;
Annual Reports 1898 (Atlanta 1899), pp. 344-345.  It should be noted that corresponding arrests for "being with a lewd woman on the streets" were only 3 and 12 respectively.

(6)  ACD 1906, pp. 145-146; ACD 1907, p. 145; ACD 1908, p 71.

(7)  ACD 1895, pp. 1336-1337; ACD 1905, pp. 1283-1285; ACD 1906, p. 1440; ACD 1907, p 1511.

(8)  Annual Reports 1892, p. 577;  Annual Reports 1898, p. 345.

(9)  Harvey Newman, "Decatur Street, Atlanta's African-American Paradise Lost," Atlanta History (Vol. XLIV # 2), Summer 2000, p. 9; Annual Reports 1893, pp. 520-533; Annual Reports 1900, pp. 320-323; Report of the Grady Hospital in the Annual Reports 1893, p. 361.

(10)  ACD 1899, p. 1358; ACD 1905, p. 1273.

(11)  Garrett, Atlanta and Environs, Vol. II, p. 574.

(12)  ACD 1899, p. 1372; Newman, "Decatur Street . . .," pp. 8-9.

(13)  Garrett, Atlanta and Environs, Vol. II, p. 127; "Day of Glory Was the Fourth," Atlanta Constitution (hereafter AC), 7/5/1896, p. 17.

(14)  "Collins Street May Go Dark," AJ, 5/21/1896, p. 3.

(15)  ACD's, 1908-1913; Newman, "Decatur Street . . .," p. 9.

(16)  "Moral Clean-Up Urged For City," AC, 10/8/1912, p. 5; "Vice Crusade Turned On Street Loiterers," AJ, 10/3/1912, p. 7; Garrett, Atlanta and Environs, Vol. II, p. 574.

(17)   "Savannah May Abolish Vice," AC, 10/8/1912, p 7; Newman, "Decatur Street . . . ," p. 9; "Resort Keeper Takes Her Life," AC, 9/24/1912, p. 9.

Shopping on Whitehall -- Victorian Atlanta's Great Shopping "Mall"

Whitehall Street [now S. Peachtree] was the great shopping "mall" in late Victorian Atlanta. Running south from Five Points, it contained many of the city's best retail establishments and was nearly always filled with shoppers. In the 1890s, merchants vied with each other to create eye-catching stores to entice customers and to best their competitors.

Many of these merchants were from Atlanta's small Jewish community like the Rich family, the Eiseman brothers, J. Regenstein, Simon & Frohsin, A. Rosenfeld & Son, and the Hirsch brothers, Morris, Henry and Joseph. (1) In 1890, the Hirsches announced the construction of a new double store building designed by a leading architect, G. L. Norrman. Located at #40 Whitehall, the store would rise five stories and be in the latest Romanesque style.

The architect was a well-known figure among the city's "German Jews." Just a few years earlier, he had created the stunning Hebrew Orphans Home on Washington Street in an elaborate mixture of Middle Eastern motifs, including horseshoe arches and a minaret-like tower. He had also designed homes or business buildings for many individual Jewish Atlantans as well. (2)

The Hirsch brothers were more than just clothing merchants. They were actively involved in the Jewish community and in Atlanta at large. Joseph Hirsch would serve as both a city councilman and alderman. He was one of the founders of the Hebrew Orphanage and served as chairman of the board of trustees of Grady Hospital, guiding the construction of the original hospital building. (3)

 The Hirsch retail building soared above its two and three story neighbors and included a cornice and tall parapet above the five stories. Built of brick and iron, it was described as "stately," having an "elegance in proportion and outside adornment," "exceedingly handsome," and a "model store" both inside and out. The builder called it "palatial" and the owners were so pleased that they used drawings of the new building in their advertisements. (4)

 It was certainly a beautiful structure in the latest architectural style. Great double Romanesque arches defined the two stores, soaring upward for four of the stories. Each floor facing Whitehall was filled with masses of plate glass windows to bring as much natural light into the building as possible. The fifth floor was restrained in comparison but contained seven round arch windows beneath the decorative cornice and tall, flat front parapet roof line. Running between the two great arches for four floors was a narrow, vertical bay containing a doorway at ground level and then a distinct window at each upper level. These were all surrounded by unique moldings, pilasters, and varying pediments [including flat, broken and triangular]. The matching, deep set grand arches which comprised the vast majority of the facade were also architecturally distinguished on each floor. Double, recessed doorways at the ground level had large projecting display windows on each side. The second floor featured projecting bay windows while the third and fourth floors sported balconies in different designs. Overall, there was a great variety of decorative elements but they were held firmly together within a highly symmetrical and restrained framework which added dignity and a strong sense of unity. (5)

The cost in 1890 was between $40,000 and $45,000. (6) This would be between $850,000 and $957,000 in modern dollars. The building would serve the Hirsch Brothers and J. Regenstein [mainly a woman's clothing store] for many decades. It is, of course, long since demolished.

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(1) Atlanta City Directory 1892, pp. 338-341. Major gentile-owned stores were on Whitehall too, including Keely's, J. M. High and the Chamberlin-Johnson Co. The Silvey and Moore-Marsh department stores were located on nearby Decatur Street.

(2) Richard Funderburke, G. L. Norrman: New South Architect and the Urbanization of Atlanta, 1881-1909. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Pp. 167-171, 491, 492, 495, 497.

(3) Historic Site Designation Report for Grady Memorial Hospital, City of Atlanta Urban Design Commission, www.atlantaga.gov.

 (4) "They Have Moved," Atlanta Journal (AJ), 9/26/1890, p. 7. "The Hirsch Building," Atlanta Constitution (AC), 3/23/1890; Advertisement for Hirsch Bros., AC, 9/28/1890; "Building Homes," AJ, 9/20/1890, p. 2.

(5) See illustrations from the AC, 3/23/1890 and "Atlanta of To-Day, 1903, Souvenir" pamphlet in the holdings of the Atlanta History Center archives.

(6) "How Atlanta Grows," AJ, 3/25/1890.

Private Schools in 1892 Atlanta. A Brief Contrast in Architecture

Although Atlanta had a public school system in 1892 there were many private schools and colleges available also. Two of these were the Washington Seminary for girls and the Gordon School for boys. They present an interesting contrast in architectural styles. The Washington Seminary is a lovely building in the older [and much out of style by 1892] Italianate with its hood molds, paired brackets under the cornice and the turned porch posts. Meanwhile, the brand new Gordon School by Gardner, Pyne and Gardner is a wonderful study in urban Romanesque styling with its symphony of round arches. Romanesque design was a legacy of the great H. H. Richardson but was soon to be superseded in popularity by Beaux Arts classicism -- a sad decline in styles in my opinion. The Gordon School also features a signature little corner turret which was very popular during this time period in Atlanta after the construction of the New Kimball House in the mid-1880s. Images are from the Atlanta City Directory for 1892.

Battle Hill Church by Leila Ross Wilburn

A 1912 view of an Atlanta church designed by the young Leila Ross Wilburn, Atlanta's second female architect [Henrietta (Hank) Dozier was the first].  Wilburn was just starting out at this time and would have a long career lasting into the 1960s.  As far as I know, this is the only church attributed to her.  This lovely little granite building was on Gordon Ave. just past Westview Cemetery in West End.  Not sure when it was demolished?  Image from the March 2, 1912 Atlanta Journal.

Lost Atlanta -- John Silvey's Great Mercantile House

On the eve of the Great Depression of 1893, there was no real hint of the economic chaos to come. Architects and wealthy Atlantans were building bigger and better homes, businesses, factories, schools and churches. One of the most significant new buildings was the one for John Silvey on Decatur Street designed by Godfrey Norrman.

John Silvey had been in Atlanta since 1847 with the exception of several years in the gold fields of California. All his life, even on the west coast, had been spent in the retail trade. By the 1880s, he was one of Atlanta's top fifteen wealthiest individuals and a founder, along with Norrman, of the Atlanta Musical Association. By 1892 he had decided to construct a new high-rise tower to house his dry goods emporium. The Silvey Building cost a whopping $75,000 and was the tallest building in Atlanta for some years, exceeding the height of the new Equitable Building by six feet on its Decatur Street frontage. (1)

With matching fronts on both Decatur Street and Edgewood Avenue, the nine story structure had a steel frame, two electric elevators to whisk shoppers to the various departments, iron window frames, a flat asphalt roof, and exterior walls of granite, brick and terracotta. By the summer of 1893, crowds turned out to marvel at the new high-rise as the granite blocks were fitted to the walls. The striking cream color store was sheathed in Georgia granite and buff, Roman [long, narrow] brick. Terracotta matching the brick filled the spandrels between the vertically grouped windows on the third through the sixth floors, which were accented by ogee arches. The latter gave the building a French Renaissance feel, while the narrow openings and corbeled cornice of the upper floors looked almost medieval in their severity. The first floor contained heavy piers of rusticated granite. (2)

With its light coloring and strong verticality, the Silvey Building formed a striking contrast to its neighbors of dark red brick and horizontal lines. It was also highly unusual for its extensive use of Roman Brick, described in one report as the only use of such building material south of Baltimore. Norrman was so pleased with his work here that he submitted his design for publication in the national journal, American Architect and Building News, and used it as an example of his best works for his application to be a member of the American Institute of Architects. (3)

The Silvey Building was demolished in the 1930s.

(1) "Mr. John Silvey," Atlanta Constitution [AC], 5/14/1893, 14; "Organized
Music," AC, 11/15/1885, 8; "Building Notes," Manufacturers Record, 3/31/1893, 173; AC, 9/15/1895, 33; "It Will Cost $75,000," Atlanta Journal, 3/15/1893, 4.

(2) Advertisement for the Silvey Company, AC, 11/29/1904, 8; "Who Will Get It," AC, 6/20/1893, 3; Elizabeth Lyon, Business Buildings In Atlanta: A Study in Urban Growth and Form, unpublished doctoral dissertation at Emory University, 1971, 275.

(3) "Illustrations," American Architect and Building News, Vol. XLI # 925 (9/16/1893), 174 [source of the above illustration]; Norrman's application to join the AIA located in the archives of the AIA and a copy in the possession of the author.

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.

_______

(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.