It's very hard to walk around downtown Atlanta now. The tearing down and rebuilding must have been an Atlanta trademark since the first returning householder after Sherman's big fire found a few boards and nailed them together. But I think the process has been stepped up.
That may be because landmarks I knew have tottered and fallen and been crushed and hauled away. It's not just our restless city's style any more. It's personal. I don't mind taking my chances in the street around "Sidewalk Closed" signs. I'm used to that. I don't mind those ghostly sheets of fabric they use to swathe building projects flapping in my face. I know they are there to save us pedestrians from fallout.
What I do mind is looking at a big hole in the ground and realizing that's where the Ansley Hotel stood - just the other day, it seems.
It's not that I had any particular affection for that old hotel. Other, grander hotels have come and gone. Remember the Kimball House? It was an architectural gem, which would be reverently preserved now. Remember the Piedmont, with its Oak Room and unsurpassed roast beef? Remember the Biltmore and the Georgian Terrace, where we went to interview opera singers and movie stars, and the Henry Grady, the political center of the state, which also had space for such visitors as Carson McCullers, Eleanor Roosevelt and Vladimir Horowitz?
They have had their day and that day has passed and I'm reconciled, but I had to stop a few moments by that muddy hole up on Forsyth Street and think about the old Ansley. It's true it lost its identity years ago when the Dinkler family bought and renamed it. Even then, as a hotel, it did not survive. But I didn't realize that it was really gone until I saw that hole in the ground.
While the Henry Grady got most of the politicians, a few chose the Ansley for their campaign headquarters and, of course, the scene of election night celebrations. I stood there thinking of the winners and the losers I had interviewed there, of the theater in the round that once flourished on the Ansley roof. The old actress, Georgia Simmons, who later came home to Georgia to die, starred there with John Carradine in "Tobacco Road." She was a memorable Ada and he was the best Jeeter Lester this side of James Barton and Broadway.
There was a place to eat in the basement called the Owl Room, where many c onvivial parties assembled. Civic clubs held their luncheons there and celebrities were guests there. My editor friend, the beautiful auburn- haired Isabelle Taylor of Doubleday, did not get there until the Ansley had been bought by the Dinkler family and had its name changed. I don't think the name change caught Mrs. Taylor's attention until she had checked in and gone to the bathroom. There before the toilet was a bathmat with the words "The Dinkler" emblazoned on it.
Mrs. Taylor gave way to a fit of the giggles.
"It said 'The Dinkler, ' " she chortled. "I knew what it was!"
As a gesture of goodwill, Nancy McLarty, the hotel's public relations person, presented Mrs. Taylor with a bathmat as a keepsake.
It occurred to me as I stood by the hole that I should call out to a man on a bulldozer to learn what they're planning to build there. But instead I picked my way down the muddy side street to Fairlie, where there was also a sidewalk obstruction detour, and on down to Cone, where something is being hammered and drilled to replace the old Georgia Hotel. No use to ask for whom the bulldozer growls, I muttered, paraphrasing John Donne. If you live in Atlanta, it growls for thee.
About the Author
