A plan to save Atlanta landmarks

The Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation recently placed the historic buildings on the Morris Brown College campus on its 2010 Places in Peril list of the state’s top 10 endangered places.

These buildings, which were the original campus of Atlanta University, the first college in the state established to educate freed slaves, are some of the most significant threatened buildings in the city.

It was in Fountain Hall (historically known as Stone Hall), a National Historic Landmark built in 1882, where W.E.B DuBois maintained an office from 1897 to 1910, an office that remains intact today.

The Places in Peril designation, along with recent articles in the AJC on the status of Morris Brown’s ability to continue as a going concern, serve to remind us of the importance of the institutions constituting the Atlanta University Center to the economic and cultural fabric of Atlanta.

In this time of extreme economic stress it seems particularly appropriate to step back and ask the question: How can the city use its limited financial resources to enhance the viability of its critical economic engines — in this case the largest concentration of historically black colleges and universities in the world.

With the acquisition of the papers of Martin Luther King Jr. in 2006, the community’s desire to have a museum that would highlight Atlanta’s role as the headquarters of the civil rights movement gained new momentum.

Under the leadership of Mayor Shirley Franklin, the ambitious idea of a Center for Human and Civil Rights took form with: the generous donation of land by the Coca-Cola Company at Centennial Olympic Park; an authorization of $40 million of city bonds ($12 million of which was recently used to pay off the balance on the loan securing the Morehouse College Martin Luther King Jr. Collection); and an exciting design for a world-class museum with a total projected cost of $125 million.

With the “Great Recession” upon us, I suspect completion of the project with its self-declared “critical success factor” of “opening debt free with a substantial endowment” a more challenging goal to achieve.

The election of a new mayor and city council coping with this recession provides us with an opportunity to explore a “plan B”— one that might establish a world-class museum and academic resource while strengthening the institutions in the Atlanta University Center — all at less cost and perhaps with greater long-term community benefit than locating the facility on Centennial Olympic Park.

Incorporating the original Atlanta University campus buildings into a redesigned human and civil rights museum is contextually and practically appropriate.

Located on land originally donated by the Freedman’s Bureau, with plenty of available land for compatible additions and parking, the Atlanta University Center has an unparalleled history of producing the intellectual and moral leadership of the civil rights movement from DuBois’ “Souls of Black Folk” to Martin Luther King Jr. Education (especially education of women) is seen worldwide as the key to establishing an ethic of human rights.

The Atlanta University Center schools would benefit from a Center for Human and Civil Rights that would bring prospective students to their campus and provide an ongoing opportunity to welcome not only the Atlanta community but the world.