Banking in the Round: Atlanta’s C&S Tower

In the late 1960s, Atlanta’s Citizens and Southern Bank left its longtime downtown headquarters for a striking new circular tower in Midtown.

Designed by Atlanta architect Richard Aeck and inspired by a revolutionary Frank Lloyd Wright concept, the new C&S building was anything but conventional. Its unusual construction solved a very practical problem for the bank and created one of Atlanta’s most distinctive modern buildings.

But more than two decades later, when C&S decided it was time for something bigger, that innovative design presented a problem that no one had worried about when the building went up. Sometimes architectural innovation comes with consequences. We take a look at the unusual life, and even more unusual fate, of Atlanta’s C&S Tower on this week’s Stories of Atlanta.