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Site Plan
From Then to Now: What’s Been Held
The original purpose of the building was the regional headquarters of the Southern School-Book Depository (SS-BD) Building.They had four offices across the southeast, aside from Atlanta. Regional offices were in Memphis, TN; Jacksonville, FL; Dallas, TX; and Jackson, MS. In 1922, Atlanta’s city zoning ordinances had changed, and white businesses could not be located in zones designated for African-Americans. So, in 1922, Burgess Smith, President of SS-BD, was closing shop on Auburn Avenue and had already secured a new depository building in another part of Atlanta that he was advertising in a small twenty-five-year pamphlet called,“The Growth of an Idea.” After the SS-BD’s departure, the building’s address changed from 121-3 Auburn to 135 Auburn. Under that address, the occupancy changed hands from a printing company to mattress renovators to a tire warehouse with several vacancies in between. However, in 1986, the longest lasting resident to date moved in. The eight-year-old African-American Panoramic Experience (APEX) Museum found its new home in “Sweet Auburn.” Upon its inauguration in 1987, the APEX renamed and dedicated the building to John Wesley Dobbs, the unofficial mayor of Sweet Auburn. For most of the APEX’s thirty-four years at 135 Auburn, their upstairs neighbors were the Southern Education Foundation, a regional non-profit that advances fairness and excellence in education for all. Upon their 150th anniversary in 2017, they moved downtown, and Constellations run by Gene Kansas Commercial Real Estate, a shared workspace, event venue, and radio studio bought the upstairs.
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Figure 6. The steel bars coming out of the west elevation are the only remains of a bridge that connected 135 Auburn to the B.F. Goodrich Tire Company located adjacent to it (on Courtland St.) in the 1970s. Tires would be delivered across the bridge and stored in the 1910 building. The bricks up window on the first floor was the original messenger counter for the SS-BD. Photo by author, September, 2020.
