Slow down with the wrecking ball; save the most historic Georgia Baptist hospital building

It’s so Atlanta to celebrate the demolition of history.

Such was the case Monday afternoon when various VIPS, including Atlanta City Council President Doug Shipman (a stand-in for Mayor Andre Dickens) and various dignitaries with Wellstar Health System and the Integral Group, gathered at the site of the former Georgia Baptist Hospital (the now-vacant Atlanta Medical Center).

The media event marking the demolition of virtually an entire inner-city block has an ominous but familiar feel. We are a city that has yet to master the art of preserving our history while building for the future.
We are a city that has made it all too easy to wipe away our past in our quest to build something new. 

It doesn’t have to be that way. 

In fact, it shouldn’t be that way. We should be able to preserve our past while building for the future.

When the Integral Group got its start with the redevelopment of the nation’s first public housing project, Techwood Homes, in the mid-1990s, it had the foresight to preserve part of the past while developing Centennial Place. 

While developing Centennial Place in time for the 1996 Summer Olympic Games, Integral Group did save a few remnants of Atlanta’s Techwood Homes past – structures that remind us of who we were and allow us to put context around what we are and what we will be.

The same thing can (should) happen at this all-important block bordered by Boulevard NE, Ralph McGill Boulevard, Parkway Drive and Highland Avenue NE – a project to be called BlvdNext. For a century, the block has been the site of one of Atlanta’s major hospitals — a place to heal the sick and serve the needs of a growing Atlanta.

In the middle of the block sits the oldest structure, built in the mid-1920s. While the building has been renovated and altered over the years, its presence on the block speaks volumes about Atlanta’s past. 

Once it’s been torn down, it can never be rebuilt.

My colleague, Delaney Tarr, and I were given an inside tour of the property on June 26 with Eric Pinckney, Integral’s president of urban program management, and Barry Roberts, an executive with Atlanta Demolition, which will be demolishing the former medical complex with the Ferma Corp. 

Ominous clouds began to form as we toured the various buildings that once made up the Atlanta Medical Center/Georgia Baptist campus. We were able to see how the site was developed from the inside out — enveloping the most historic building that sits in the middle of the block. 

Trees and green space surround the heart of the block and the signature original building, giving a wonderful sense of place that’s hidden from view – surrounded by institutional hospital buildings constructed in the 1950s.

At the very least, the 1920s-era structure should be saved to remind us of how Atlanta evolved and how that block has served the health needs of our city for a century.

Currently, plans call for the complete demolition of all the buildings on the site, basically turning the block into scorched earth with no detailed plans of what will be built on the site. Sadly, the demolition permits already have been approved.

“Making the demolition of Georgia Baptist some sort of partnership of history and progress is painful,” said David Mitchell, executive director of the Atlanta Preservation Center. “To somehow bless the destruction of these buildings as a path to a better and bolder tomorrow is a testament to a lack of vision.”

Mitchell bemoaned Monday’s event celebrating the “execution” of the buildings on the block “with cheers and raised glasses” — using the nation’s third largest demolition machine.

“All that history will be reduced to memory and moonscape,” Mitchell said. “Yet if somehow the circa 1926-Main Hospital Building/Surgical Building could somehow be spared and allowed to represent what stood for over 100 years, perhaps a small part of our shared story could anchor this development with a nod to the past with some dignity.”

I couldn’t agree more.

Understandably, there are complexities related to keeping the most historic building. In the 1950s, when Georgia Baptist added several buildings to the block, the northern edge of the historic building was attached to one of the additions.

Atlanta Demolition’s Barry Roberts said they had not been asked to evaluate what would be involved to preserve the historic building, which would mean having to detach the historic structure from the 1950s addition. Then developers would need to figure out how to integrate the historic building as part of the new development.

But as long as the building is standing, it’s still not too late to figure that out.

At the event on Monday, Egbert Perry talked theoretically about what will be developed on the block – restating his commitment of Integral “reknitting a part of the city” and “revitalizing the community.”

Here is the rub. By tearing everything down at once before having development plans designed and financed leaves the real possibility of a barren site for years to come.

“We don’t have a gun to our heads, no ticking timebomb,” Perry said at the grand demolition event on Monday. “We are here to do it right, not fast.”

Part of doing it right is to not demolish the entire block with no guarantees of future development that will be subject to the market. The conceptual plan calls for a mixed-income, mixed-use community. But I’ve been around long enough to have seen historic city blocks torn down while hoping for future development.

The most egregious one that comes to mind is Pershing Point — one of Atlanta’s most architecturally significant blocks at the triangle formed by Peachtree and West Peachtree streets in Midtown. Developer John Williams and partners bought the block, hoping to land the IBM office tower. Instead of getting the IBM building, they razed the block, which had 300 apartments, street-level retail and an urban feel.

Williams told me in 1998 that tearing down half a dozen historic buildings at Pershing Point was the biggest regret of his career. 

“I personally regret that more than anything else,” said Williams, who died in 2018. “If we knew then what we know today, we would have kept those apartments and remodeled and rehabilitated them. It had everything we are trying to create today.”

Although a new building eventually was built on that location — National Service Industries and later Jones Day — the block still has vacant spaces, including the corner of 17th and West Peachtree where Margaret Mitchell of “Gone with the Wind” fame lived in a now-demolished apartment building while writing the book.

Rick White, a spokesman for Integral, said the company understands it’s important to preserve the history of the site.

“The reality is, over the years, the buildings here have been modified and altered so extensively that preserving them in their original form is no longer feasible,” White wrote in a text. “Even so, we’ve made the intentional decision to keep the original entryway of the hospital. It’s a visible reminder of what this place has meant to so many people, and it will remain a physical connection to the past.”

White went on to say it will honor the history by telling the “full story of the Old Fourth Ward” and working with academics at Georgia State University, local leaders, and longtime residents to collect oral histories and build a community archive.

To my friends at Integral and Wellstar, physical history matters. Please reconsider your plans to demolish the entire block. Planning to dismantle and eventually rebuild the original entryway — not necessarily at its current location — will not preserve the sense of history that the site deserves.

Note to readers: When we toured the site with Pinckney and Roberts, I was pleasantly surprised to learn the magnificent trees along Boulevard will be saved — that they are not part of the plan to scrub the entire block. But the trees in the middle of block around the most historic structure would be cut down along with the demolition. By saving the building, we could also save that precious green space and those trees — amenities to any development that will be built on the block in the future.

To read Delaney Tarr’s story about the demolition project, click here.

See SaportaReport’s exclusive photos inside the demolished hospital buildings here.