Landmark Old Fashioned Midtown Atlanta Hotel

Georgian Terrace Hotel

Georgian Terrace Hotel in 2008

Full general information
Location	659 Peachtree Street NE, Atlanta
Opening	1911 (addition in 1991)
Owner	OTH Hotels & Resorts
Management	Chesapeake Hospitality
Technical details
Floor count	10 stories in 1911 19-story fly added in 1991
Design and construction
Architect	Original hotel: William Lee Stoddart Addition: Smallwood, Reynolds, Stewart, Stewart and Associates
Developer	Joseph F. Gatins, Jr
Other information
Number of rooms	326
Number of restaurants	2
Website
Official site

Georgian Terrace Hotel
U.Southward. Historic district Contributing property
Atlanta Landmark Edifice


Architect	William Lee Stoddart
Architectural style	Moorish Revival, Beaux-Arts way, Renaissance Revival
Part of	Fox Theatre Celebrated District (ID78003178)
Significant dates
Added to NRHP	October 7, 1978^[one]
Designated ALB	June thirteen, 1990

The Georgian Terrace Hotel in Midtown Atlanta, part of the Trick Theatre Historic Commune, was designed by architect William Lee Stoddart in a Beaux-Arts fashion that was intended to evoke the architecture of Paris. Construction commenced on July 21, 1910, and concluded on September eight, 1911, and the hotel opened on October two, 1911.^[two] The George C. Fuller Construction Visitor was contractor, and the developer was Joseph F. Gatins, Jr.^[two]

A 19-story fly, designed past Smallwood, Reynolds, Stewart, Stewart and Associates, was added in 1991.^[3] ^[4] A major renovation was completed in 2009.

The Georgian Terrace is a fellow member of Historic Hotels of America, the official program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Architecture [edit]

The original 10-story Georgian Terrace Hotel was designed to adapt to Atlanta'southward early trolley track lines that met at the corner of Peachtree Street and Ponce de Leon Avenue. It was one of the first hotels built exterior of the urban center's downtown business district in a so residential neighborhood, which had been land originally owned by Richard Peters.

At a toll of $500,000, the hotel was built of butter-colored brick, marble, and limestone in the Beaux-Arts style as a Southern interpretation of the Parisian hotel. The hotel features classical architectural details, such as turreted corners, floor-to-ceiling Palladian-styled windows, and broad wrap-effectually columned terraces. The hotel is largely unadorned until its cornice line, which is embellished by highly-decorative terra cotta.

The Peachtree Street façade is equanimous of a two-story loftier window arcade ready nether a broad cornice supported on narrow pilasters and has a centered portico. The Ponce de Leon Avenue façade features a portico held up past four columns that residual on a rusticated, arcaded base. This portico was used as the Ladies Carriage entrance and provided access to the main hotel; the café terrace, which held exotic plants, tables, and chairs to resemble cafes in Europe; and a lower level of the hotel, which at once housed the WAKE 1340AM radio station.

Originally, the hotel had a prominent, tile-buttressed, shed roof cornice that was supported by ornamented, paired brackets, merely this element was removed in 1945.

The inside of the hotel was decorated with crystal and Italian-bronze chandeliers, white marble columns, ornate pilasters, paneled walls, elliptical staircases, and Italian-tiled floors. In addition to guest rooms, the hotel housed the Winter Garden, the Terrace Garden Lounging Room, which was well-nigh entirely enclosed in drinking glass, the Terrace Eating place Grill Room, general direction offices, an elevator, phone booths, a curio booth, an "oak-mission" busy Rathskeller, hairdresser shops, a manicure parlor, and an ornate ballroom that was the setting for the 1939 Gone with the Air current Gala.

All of the hotel'due south original furniture and interior furnishings were from M. Rich and Brothers Co., later Rich's.^[five] ^{[half dozen]} ^[seven] ^[viii] ^[9] ^[10]

History [edit]

On October 2, 1911, thousands of guests from Atlanta and other cities attended the opening night ceremonies of the Georgian Terrace Hotel, where they were entertained past a costumed-Castilian orchestra performing in the M Ballroom. Immediately, guests and the press dubbed the hotel equally a "singled-out step frontward in Southern hoteldom" and a "Parisian hotel on a noted boulevard in a metropolitan urban center". Over subsequent decades, the hotel would exist referred to equally the "M Old Lady of Peachtree".^[nine]

Since its opening, the hotel has been the place for numerous historical events and housed several prominent guests, including Clark Gable, Tallulah Bankhead, Calvin Coolidge, John J. Pershing, Walt Disney, and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Starting in 1913, famous Italian tenor Enrico Caruso along with members of The Metropolitan Opera used the hotel as their Atlanta headquarters when they came yearly to the city to perform in bound concerts. Once the Play a joke on Theatre opened across the street from the hotel in 1929, traffic on Peachtree Street would be stopped and a red carpet rolled from the door of the hotel to the theatre entrance, allowing the opera stars and other celebrities staying at the hotel to make a chiliad archway into the theatre before their shows started.

In the 1920s, Arthur Murray, who was then a pupil at Georgia Tech, started teaching dance classes in the hotel'south Grand Ballroom. This enterprise somewhen spawned his franchised-branded trip the light fantastic toe lesson business concern. In 1926, Georgia's chief investigator for the Solicitor General, Bert Donaldson, was murdered at the hotel. It was thought that this planned "hit" was show of Atlanta's underworld connections to organized offense.

In 1935, Macmillan editor Harold Latham decided to stay at the hotel while scouting the Atlanta area for new writers and manuscripts. While in town, he met Peggy Mitchell Marsh, whom he was introduced to through a common associate. This mutual associate also had told Latham that Marsh had written a novel about Atlanta during the American Civil War and Reconstruction. Subsequently several failed attempts to obtain the manuscript from Marsh, Latham finally succeeded in getting it from her in the anteroom of the hotel as he was nigh to depart for New Orleans. Upon handing the manuscript to Latham, Marsh said, "If yous actually want it you lot may take it, merely information technology is incomplete and unrevised."^[11] That unfinished novel was completed and published in 1936 as Gone with the Wind, winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1937. While she insisted on using her married name socially, the book was published under her maiden proper name of Margaret Mitchell.^[12]

On December 15, 1939, the Georgian Terrace Hotel's Chiliad Ballroom was the site of the Gone with the Wind Gala, whose attendees included Clark Gable, Carole Lombard, Vivien Leigh, Laurence Olivier, Olivia de Havilland, Claudette Colbert, Victor Fleming, Louis B. Mayer, David O. Selznick, Margaret Mitchell, and several other notable guests.

The premiere of Gone with the Air current was in Atlanta in 1939. All of the stars and the Director of the pic (with the exception of Vivien Leigh and her lover at the time, Laurence Olivier) stayed at the Georgian Terrace. The pre-premiere party was held at the hotel.

Reverse to popular conventionalities, the premier showing of Gone With the Wind was not held at the Pull a fast one on Theatre, merely rather at Loew's Grand Theatre in downtown Atlanta. After the movie was screened there, its stars were ushered to the Georgian Terrace via a motorcade through a parade road on Peachtree Street.

During the premiere of Song of the S, which did have place at the Trick Theatre, Walt Disney stayed at the hotel. He returned to his room before the film started; unexpected audience reactions of whatsoever kind upset him and he preferred not to watch information technology with the audience.

The Georgian Terrace Hotel saw quite a few changes in the 1940s. It had become a residential hotel in 1945 and had been modernized with air-conditioning, new plumbing, and some interior changes. In 1945, the prominent tile-buttressed, shed roof cornice was removed.

During the 1970s, the Grand Ballroom was turned into the Electric Ballroom by concert promoters Alex Cooley and Mark Golob. Musical performers providing concerts at the hotel included Billy Joel, Fleetwood Mac, Patti Smith, and Bruce Springsteen. The 1974 moving picture Cockfighter, starring Warren Oates, features some scenes that were shot at the Georgian Terrace.^[13]

By 1981, revenues were in steady reject and the hotel airtight its doors for the first fourth dimension in its 70-year history. Past the eye of that decade, the hotel had been boarded up and condemned. In 1986, however, the hotel was listed every bit a part of the "Fox Theatre District" on the National Register of Historic Places, which successfully blocked plans for its demolition.

The 1990s saw a rebirth of the hotel. In 1991, the hotel was converted into a luxury apartment edifice, and a new 19-story wing consummate with a roof-elevation pool was built to resemble the original x-story Beaux-Arts-style hotel. In 1997, the apartments were vacated, and the property reopened every bit a luxury hotel.

The first decade of the 21st century saw two major renovations washed at the hotel, 1 in 2000 and ane in 2009, which included the opening of Livingston's Restaurant and Bar and Mims Café, both named after early Atlanta Mayor Livingston Mims, who had built his house in 1879 on the corner where the hotel at present stands.

In April 2007, the hotel was used by Robert Rodriguez to moving picture a Bacardi Global Brands commercial for the European market titled El Toro. This commercial starred George Clooney, Jamie Rex, and Leonor Varela.^[5]

In the fall of 2010, the Georgian Terrace's Yard Ballroom was used every bit a filming location for the Jason Bateman and Ryan Reynolds film The Change-Up. In the film, the ballroom doubles every bit Plantation Oaks Country Club.^[6] ^[7] ^[eight] ^[14] ^[xv]

Run across also [edit]

National Register of Celebrated Places listings in Fulton County, Georgia
Hotels in Atlanta

References [edit]

^ "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. Apr 15, 2008.
^ ^a ^b "The Georgian Terrace Hotel". City of Atlanta Online. City of Atlanta. 2010. Archived from the original on May 28, 2010. Retrieved February 20, 2010.
^ Craig, Robert One thousand. (1995). Atlanta Architecture: Art Deco to Modern Archetype, 1929-1959. Gretna, Louisiana: Pelican Publishing Company, Inc. p. 78. ISBN978-0-88289-961-9.
^ "Georgian Terrace Apartments". Emporis.com . Retrieved February 20, 2010.
^ ^a ^b Atlanta Historic Resource Workbook by the Atlanta Urban Design Commission, September 1981
^ ^a ^b AIA Guide to the Architecture of Atlanta: University of Georgia Press, 1993
^ ^a ^b Atlanta Preservation Eye's SoNo/Midtown Commercial District Tour Guide: APC, 2009
^ ^a ^b "Archived copy". Archived from the original on May 28, 2010. Retrieved Feb 21, 2010. {{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived re-create as title (link)
^ ^a ^b The Ponce Lobby by Richard Flinn, Director of Restoration for The Fox Theatre; 1981?, [Atlanta?], Ga.: n.p.
^ Rich's of Atlanta: The Story of a Store since 1867 by Henry Givens Bakery, 1953, Foote and Davies
^ Road to Tara: The Life of Margaret Mitchell by Anne Edwards, 1983, Ticknor & Fields
^ Road to Tara: The Life of Margaret Mitchell by Anne Edwards, 1983, Ticknor & Fields
^ Warren Oates: a wild life by Susan Compo, 2009, The University Press of Kentucky
^ "Atlanta Periodical-Constitution, Nov 24, 2010". Archived from the original on November 25, 2010. Retrieved Nov 24, 2010.
^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on March 27, 2010. Retrieved February 21, 2010. {{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived re-create as championship (link)