DEL.ICIO.USThe Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 07/10/08
The latest intramural contest at Georgia Tech has nothing to do with sports. It's about a building.
On one side is the Georgia Tech Foundation, which raises money for the school and lines up some of Atlanta's biggest builders and developers on its board. On the other is a pick-up squad of Tech students and alums, including a number of architects, who hope the foundation isn't about to fumble one away.
 Allen Sullivan/aesullivan@ajc.com | ||
| A corbeled keystone on the Crum and Forster building on Spring Street. | ||
 Allen Sullivan/aesullivan@ajc.com | ||
| Iron scrollwork on the Crum and Forster building. The Georgia Tech Foundation purchased the 1920s-era building and has proposed its demolition. | ||
 Allen Sullivan/aesullivan@ajc.com | ||
| Architects Jonathan LaCrosse and Laura DePree, granddaughter of a designer of the Crum and Forster building, are fighting to save it. | ||
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The football in question is a curio property in Midtown: the Crum and Forster building at 771 Spring St.
Finished in 1928 — the year the Varsity first laid chili to dog down the street — it's a three-story charmer with a red-tile roof and a Renaissance façade of columns and arches crowned by the limestone forms of two owls and a lion's face.
The foundation, whose offices are in a modern mid-rise across the street, bought the building last December and applied for a demolition permit in April. The new owners said they wanted to expand Technology Square, the school's mixed-use development in Midtown, but immediate plans call only for replacing the building with a grass-planted lot.
The proposal has touched off one of the most contentious preservation tussles in Atlanta in years.
"This is a real bell-ringer," says Mark McDonald, president of the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation, which opposes the demolition along with the Atlanta Preservation Center.
Such organizations can be expected to throw themselves in front of a wrecking ball. More noteworthy are the Tech people who have joined the debate.
At the most recent public hearing, the president of the graduate student body, the director of the architecture program and several Tech-trained architects spoke against the demolition.
The student newspaper, the Technique, ran an editorial cartoon that showed the building pleading, "Don't raze me, bro!" Almost 2,000 people, including scores of Tech grads, have signed an online petition asking the foundation to consider other uses for the property.
"I send students over there to sketch that building," says Tech architecture professor Elizabeth Dowling, who endorsed the petition.
Of all the people campaigning to save the building, one has a special motivation. For her, it's personal.
Close connection
Laura DePree has never forgotten that day in graduate school. She was facing a panel of Tech professors when one of them happened to mention how much he admired the elegant old building on Spring Street.
"I was so proud," DePree says. "I told everyone, 'My grandfather designed that building!' "
DePree, a Midtown architect, is the granddaughter of Lewis "Buck" Crook, whose firm, Ivey and Crook, co-designed the Crum and Forster building.
Both Atlantans had close ties to Tech. As a student, Ernest Ivey petitioned the school to create an architecture program and was one of its first graduates. Crook earned his architecture degree from Tech in 1919 and later lectured there.
After college, the two worked with Atlanta's renowned classical architects, Neel Reid and Philip Shutze, before going out on their own in 1923. One of their early commissions was to build a regional headquarters for the Crum and Forster insurance company.
"It's one of their finest buildings," says William R. Mitchell, an architectural historian who published a volume about Crook. "There's almost nothing else like it in Atlanta."
Ivey and Crook went on to design hundreds of buildings, many of them churches, and 40 jobs on the Emory University campus alone.
As fashions changed,
they remained devoted classicists.
"Daddy was greatly disappointed in modern architecture," says one of his daughters, Lois Crook Crossley of Savannah. "He called it orange-crate architecture."
When Crook died of a heart attack in 1967, Crum and Forster was still occupying its building.
Less than a decade later, the company sold the property to a law firm, which sold it to an engineering firm in 1989. Williams-Russell and Johnson stayed 18 years and renovated the structure three times, most recently in 2002.
"It was in solid shape when we left it," says the firm's president, Pelham Williams. "I'd give it a 7 on a scale of 10."
So why did he sell?
"It's a lovely building, but inefficient. The radiators and air conditioning fight each other. It needs a new electrical system. We were going to have to put some significant dollars into it."
The Georgia Tech Foundation had been interested in the property for at least a decade. With other developers making offers, Williams and his partners finally agreed to sell for $11 million.
The foundation says it pursued demolition after evaluating the building and deciding it was "not economically feasible" to upgrade it to modern standards.
Jonathan LaCrosse doesn't buy it. The Tech-trained architect, who helped DePree organize the opposition, slipped into the building to take photos of the interior, which has been partially gutted in preparation for demolition.
"That building is in great shape," he says, comparing it to another Midtown landmark he sneaked into when he was a student.
The Biltmore Hotel, which sat vacant for years, was successfully restored as an office complex. After selling the Crum and Forster building, Williams-Russell and Johnson moved there.
'Should have been listed'
There was a time in Atlanta when almost any building could be razed for any reason.
In the 1960s and '70s, the city lost some of its finest heirlooms — the Peachtree Arcade, the Piedmont Hotel, both downtown train stations — with scarcely a protest. The preservation movement didn't really take root locally until the Fox Theatre was threatened in 1974, and a groundswell of public opinion saved it.
As a practical matter, though, it is the city's 1989 preservation ordinance that protects 54 designated properties and 15 districts. If a building isn't listed, it isn't protected.
"This one should have been listed," says Boyd Coons, director of the Atlanta Preservation Center.
The Crum and Forster building fell between the cracks because it was part of a special district covered by Blueprint Midtown, a public-private guideline for development in the booming neighborhood.
"Our committee definitely thought it was worth saving," says Susan Mendheim, president of the Midtown Alliance, which convened the deliberations. "It was No. 4 on a list of 19 buildings that we thought should be landmarked. But no one did the work and went to City Council to landmark them."
Because of the omission, the foundation's demolition request did not go the usual route for historic properties: to the Urban Design Commission and City Council. It went instead to hearings before a Neighborhood Planning Unit and a Midtown panel called the Development Review Council.
Both bodies voted unanimously against the demolition, but their opinions are purely advisory.
The application will now be reviewed by the city's Bureau of Planning, which may have no legal basis to deny the request.
"The only real chance to stop this is to lobby the foundation," says Myles Smith, an intown activist.
City Councilwoman Mary Norwood wrote letters to board members and says several did not seem to know about the controversy. She hopes something can be worked out.
"I'd love to see a design competition to reuse the building," she says. "With all the architects they have at Georgia Tech, they could come up with something clever."
This week, the foundation hired an architecture firm known for its preservation projects — Surber, Barber, Choate & Hertlein — to re-evaluate options for the building. Its report is expected in August.
In the meantime, there are no plans to withdraw the demolition request.
"If we did that," says Carl Westmoreland, a lawyer representing the foundation, "someone would apply to landmark that building the next day."
On that, both sides agree.
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