Kell Hall Timeline
1925
Opened as the Ivy Street Garage, the first parking garage in Atlanta.
1945
Enrollment at the Atlanta Center’s Evening College spikes with the flood of veterans returning from World War II and it quickly outgrows its only classroom building on Luckie Street.
College President George Sparks sees potential in the parking structure, also known as the Bolling Jones Building, and purchases the six-story, 180,000-square-foot building for $296,000.
The parking garage ramps remain — viewed as an asset for veterans with disabilities returning from the war — and became a signature feature of the school, which later name its yearbook “Rampway.”
1946
Classes began in the new building in March. The school occupies only two floors at first and leases the remaining space.
Other tenants include Southern Bell Telephone Co., Franklin Tire Co., a sawmill, the state Board of Regents and the teachers’ retirement system.
In the building’s first few years, the sixth floor is used as rehearsal space for the new Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and also houses two bowling alleys.
1964
The building is dedicated as Kell Hall, after the first dean of the Georgia Tech Evening School of Commerce, the school that would become Georgia State University.
2013
Kell Hall today houses the Geosciences, Chemistry and Biology departments, as well as research labs, and connects to Sparks Hall, Langdale Hall and the Arts and Humanities building.
Source: Georgia State University
The old yellow building has served as Atlanta’s first parking garage, a saw mill, the city symphony’s rehearsal space and the first permanent building on Georgia State University downtown campus.
Now Kell Hall, like so much of the city’s history, has one last mission: the wrecking ball.
Georgia State President Mark Becker announced plans Wednesday to tear down the 88-year-old building on Peachtree Center Avenue. In its stead, leaders want to create a true campus green amid the city’s forest of concrete and steel. Demolition will be scheduled within the next five years.
“We need green space at the core of our campus,” said Becker, who unveiled the plan to applause at his annual address to faculty and the university’s more than 32,000 students.
“To achieve this vision for lawns and public areas that will for the first time give our university community inviting and attractive areas in the center of campus, we will have to remove Kell Hall and parts of two other buildings,” he said. “All of this is being planned for … and it will be worth it. This plan will transform our campus and make it an even better environment to work and learn in.”
What was originally known as the Ivy Street Garage opened in 1925, its fancy concrete ramps inside setting a new standard in what became a car-centered town.
As the years went by, a neighbor saw it as something else: relief for what was then the Atlanta Center’s Evening College. A flood of veterans returning from World War II overflowed the school’s only classroom building on downtown’s Luckie Street.
The future university purchased the six-story, 180,000-square-foot building in 1945 for $296,000. It hosted classes on only two floors, leasing the remaining space to what would become a who’s who of Atlanta businesses and civic groups — Southern Bell Telephone Co., Franklin Tire Co., a sawmill, the state Board of Regents and the teachers’ retirement system.
The then-new Atlanta Symphony Orchestra rehearsed on the same sixth floor that housed two bowling alleys.
And those distinctive concrete ramps? They remain today as a signature feature of the building, which now hosts a slate of research labs along with several science departments including chemistry and biology.
“It’s a long time coming. The building is at a point where it doesn’t pay to maintain it,” said A.J. Robinson, president of Central Atlanta Progress and the Atlanta Downtown Improvement District, whose office is nearby in Hurt Plaza.
Georgia State leaders envision using the site occupied by Kell Hall to eventually create a kind of green corridor, connecting nearby Woodruff Park through campus to a courtyard anchored by the new Petit Science Center on Decatur Street near the Connector. That is the long-term plan. In the short-term, Kell’s time is limited.
Atlanta’s supporters often laud the city’s ability to continually reinvent itself. Kell’s value in that universe seems small, since historic preservation experts were not immediately familiar with its history.
“For better or worse, we have the biggest collection of old buildings,” Robinson said. “Georgia State’s enthusiasm to either renovate these buildings or take them down to do something new or exciting is great for downtown.”
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