High-Res QTVR Panorama (1.6MB)
Low-Res QTVR Panorama (512KB)
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Atlanta's skyline (upper portion of QTVR) is being seen by millions of people this year. Much of that skyline is the work of Georgia Tech College of Architecture graduates. The same skyline view (lower portion of QTVR) shows Atlanta without the Tech influence. The buildings removed are those for which Tech alumni were lead designers, founders or managing principals of associated architectural firms.
Night Time QTVR (574KB)
Shaping the Skyline
Over the years, Georgia Tech architects have used Atlanta as their proving ground. The result has been dramatic.By David Kennedy
I'm gonna see the world--Italy, Greece, the Parthenon, the Coliseum," George Bailey proclaims in the movie It's a Wonderful Life. "Then I'm coming back here and go to college and see what they know, and then I'm gonna build things. I'm gonna build airfields; I'm gonna build skyscrapers a hundred stories high; I'm gonna build bridges a mile long..."
When the world comes to Atlanta for the 1996 Olympics, millions of people will see the kind of city George Bailey dreamed of building. Of course, Atlanta's coliseums, skyscrapers and airfields are not the accomplishments of one individual; but they are largely the work of hundreds of graduates from one institution--Georgia Tech.
When Jimmy Stewart uttered those lines in the 1946 classic film, the Georgia Tech architecture program was 38 years old. Around the country and in Atlanta, college classrooms were crowded with veterans returning from World War II. The United Nations had taken up permanent residence in New York and a young man named John Portman was four years away from a Georgia Tech architecture degree.
Portman and other Tech graduates were about to put in practice what they had learned at Georgia Tech and--over the next 50 years--shape the skyline of Atlanta. Graduates like Portman and George Heery would use their college town as their building ground.
And build they did: The Westin Peachtree Plaza, Atlanta Hyatt Regency, Marriott Marquis Hotel, Peachtree Center Tower and Mall, the Merchandise Mart, Apparel Mart, Gift Mart, Inforum, Marquis One and Marquis Two Towers, One Peachtree Center, Georgia Power Co. Corporate Headquarters, Georgia Dome, First Union, and many others were fashioned by these two graduates.
According to 1995 Atlanta Business Chronicle (ABC) information, the company that George Heery founded took in $69 million in Atlanta projects in 1994. The value of those buildings is estimated at more than $1.4 billion.
The ABC's 1995 Book of Lists reports that 17 of the top 25 architecture firms were led by Georgia Tech alumni and responsible for $3.6 billion (92 percent) of the construction value of projects done by the top 25 firms. Those 17 firms have Tech alumni as managing principals or founders.
"I doubt you'll find that sort of influence in any other city," said Tony Wrenn, archivist and architectural historian for the American Institute of Architects (AIA) in Washington D.C. "For one thing, Georgia Tech's relationship to Atlanta is unique." Few other skyscraping cities have one major school of architecture from which to draw talent.
"I am fascinated by the growth of Georgia Tech," said Tech's Dean of Architecture Thomas Galloway, "the campus, the evolving skyline of Atlanta, and the emergence of the city and the institution in the larger, global world of which they have become a part. It's clear to me that Georgia Tech and the college will continue to contribute to the potential that Georgia and the city of Atlanta hold in a national and global setting."
And while George Bailey's dreams of becoming a world-renowned architect never came together, Portman's and countless others' from Tech have. With Atlanta as their backyard, students go no further than their classroom windows or the courtyard of the College of Architecture to see the skyline accomplishments of alumni like John Portman, Tom Ventulett, Preston Crum, George Heery, Phillip Smallwood, Bill Reynolds, Jerry Cooper, Niles Bolton, Larry Lord, Ivenue Love-Stanley and Bill Stanley. Closer to home, Tech alumni designed all but one of the housing units that make up the Olympic Village.
Even when outside firms choose to work in Atlanta, they draw upon the expertise of Tech educated designers and architects. New York's renowned Philip Johnson and John Burge (AT&T Tower and Seagram Tower, NY) worked with George Heery's firm on One Atlantic Center, a revivalist skyscraper in Midtown Atlanta.
The New York office of Skidmore Owings & Merrill teamed up with Tech-led FABRAP (Finch, Alexander, Barnes, Rothschild, & Paschal) to erect the BellSouth tower downtown. Tech alumni have built or collaborated on most of the big buildings in Atlanta, and it's Atlanta's skyscrapers that give the city the distinctive look the world will see when Olympic cameras focus on Atlanta this summer.
In the shadows of the tall buildings, the Georgia Power Co. Headquarters, Grady Hospital, CNN Center, Georgia World Congress Center, Georgia Dome and Peachtree Center anchor the downtown skyline. In Midtown, Promenade One, Colony Square and the Woodruff Arts center are landmarks.
On the Georgia Tech campus, the work of Tech-associated architects is visible everywhere. Works include the showplace Warldlaw Center (Jova/Daniels/Busby), the Catholic Center (Durfee and Hughes), the Architecture Building (Bush-Brown, Gailey and Heffernan), the Manufacturing Research Center (Lord, Aeck and Sargent), the Georgia Tech Aquatic Center (Smallwood, Reynolds, Stewart, Stewart and Associates; Stanley Love-Stanley) and the original and re-created Alexander Memorial Coliseum (Aeck and Associates and Thompson, Ventulett, Stainback).
Throughout the world, their names are connected to specific areas of expertise; Nix Mann, Greenberg Farrow, Rosser International, Howell Rusk Dodson, Wakefield Beasley, Roberson/Loi/Roof, Diedrich & Associates, Chapman Coyle, Sizemore Floyd, Stang and Newdow. Each has set its sights on Atlanta, carving out a niche in which to prosper.
[This article is taken directly from the Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine, Spring 1996. Credits for the skyline photograph go to Gary Meek. Fred Carman is credited with the subsequent image editing.]
