C OV E R S T ORY
STONE, STEEL, GLASS AND LIGHT OLD AND NEW BEAUTY TAKE MANY FORMS IN THE AREA’S IMPRESSIVE ARCHITECTURE STORY:
Oglethorpe University 4484 Peachtree Rd. N.E., Atlanta 30319
The signature Collegiate Gothic style of the Oglethorpe campus in Brookhaven dates to the first building, Hearst Hall, which debuted in 1915, and has carried through to the newest building, the Cousins Center for Science and Innovation that opened this spring. The architecture draws inspiration from Corpus Christi College in Oxford, England, the alma mater of James Oglethorpe, the university’s namesake. The Atlanta architectural firm Morgan, Dillon and Downing, as it Lupton Hall, and most of the other buildings on the Oglethorpe campus, are a stunning example of Collegiate Gothic architecture.
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October 2019 | Simply Buckhead
was known then, set the standard, including Stone Mountain granite, Indiana limestone and slate roofs, with the first three buildings. Hearst Hall’s Tudor-style details have drawn film crews from shows such as Sleepy Hollow and The Vampire Diaries. Lupton Hall was erected in three connected phases and includes the bell tower where students celebrate completing their studies. Lowry Hall, which includes the Oglethorpe University Museum of Art, offers a glimpse at the past with a wall inside the Weltner Library that was the back of the building before an expansion. Passersby on Peachtree Road see the Gothic architecture on the outer
wall of Hermance Stadium. Thornwell Jacobs, who served as university president from 1915 to 1943, mandated copying the look of the great English universities when he revived Oglethorpe and brought it to its current Peachtree Road location (the school had shuttered twice since its 1835 founding before being permanently resurrected by Jacobs). “There was nothing this far out. This was almost rural Georgia,” says Eli Arnold, the university librarian, explaining that electricity, water and the streetcar had to be extended to the campus, built on a portion of 600 acres donated by newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst.
The buildings are Oglethorpe’s “silent faculty,” Jacobs wrote in 1927, adding that they served as “a constant source of delight and inspiration to its students, teaching quietly but surely the highest ideals of life.” Even the one academic nonconformist from the university’s signature style brings that inspirational flair: midcentury modern Goodman Hall, designed by Toombs, Amisano and Wells, the firm behind such Atlanta landmarks as Lenox Square and The Woodruff Arts Center. Larry Schall, who is retiring as Oglethorpe’s president next summer after 15 years, says the Cousins Center and the 6-year-old Turner Lynch 100 Digital Creativity
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oet John Keats wrote “beauty is truth,” but the truth in architecture is that beauty emerges from a balance of form and function. The beautiful buildings we’re highlighting in this issue range from more than a century to just a few months old, but all of them combine eye-catching features outside and in with the amenities and conveniences that make them pleasurable to use as well as view. You can tour local history and peek at the future through these area works of architectural art.
Michael Jacobs