This Former Hotel in Atlanta has been Converted to Offices and Owned by MIT

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The Atlanta Biltmore Hotel is an excellent example of the grand hotels built across America in the 1920s. The location and monumental size of the hotel mark the commercial progress of Atlanta demographically and financially during this period. The neo-Georgian architecture was felt to reflect the refined grace of New South society as well as signify its economic successes. The Atlanta Biltmore has been able to survive the rush of more centrally located hotels during the 1970s, as well as the age of interstate-related suburban motels.

The primary financial impetus for the construction of the Atlanta Biltmore was provided by Atlanta capitalist William Candler. Candler was the son of Asa G. Candler, Sr., president of the Atlanta-based Coca-Cola Company, and had served as secretary-treasurer of that company until its sale for $25 million in 1919 to the Woodruff Group. In 1921, William Candler bought the tract of land bounded by West Peachtree Street, Cypress Street, Fifth Street and Sixth Street. Two years later, in conjunction with John McEntee Bowman, New York proprietor of the Bowman hotel chain, Candler incorporated the Atlanta Biltmore Hotel Company, to which he deeded this property. The hotel's original incorporating officers included Bowman as president, Candler as vice president, and Holland Ball Judkins as vice president and manager.

The final design of the new hotel was completed by Leonard Schultze of the New York firm of Schultze and Weaver. In addition to the Atlanta Biltmore, Schultze designed Bowman's Biltmore hotels in Los Angeles and Havana. Construction began in 1923 by the Starrett Brothers. In April 1924, the Atlanta Biltmore was opened.

In an article on the Atlanta Biltmore in the December 1924, issue of Arts and Decoration, Matlack Price apostrophized the modern hotel as the "city's point of contact with the world beyond its own borders." The 1920s was, among other things, the era of the "great modern hotel." Improved transportation, including the mass production of comparatively inexpensive Fords, combined with a climate of financial speculation and seemingly unbounded prosperity, at least for the more fortunate members of society, sent businessmen and newly enfranchised middle-class vacationers traveling around the country in search of bigger deals and more elegant surroundings. It was one of the important duties of the new hotels to provide a stage for this twenties' drama of prosperity and physical mobility. Again, Matlack Price, in a 1924 article on the Los Angeles Biltmore, articulated the role of the hotel best:

The opening ceremonies and subsequent history of the Atlanta Biltmore indicate that this vision of the hotel was precisely what socially and financially prominent Atlantans and visitors had in mind when they erected and patronized this new $6 million hostelry.

A train chartered in New York City, known as the Atlanta Biltmore Special, brought prominent Northern hotel men to Atlanta for the opening festivities of the Biltmore on April 19^th, 1924. A giant cotton key was presented by Georgia Governor Clifford Walker and Atlanta Mayor Walter Sims to this delegation on their arrival in Atlanta. The dinner-dance at the hotel that evening was broadcast nationally on radio and featured the orchestra of Enrico Leide. The financial and political prominence of this visiting delegation is underscored by the fact that they were received by President Calvin Coolidge at the White House on the return portion of their trip. Also during the opening weekend, reportedly 1,000 automobiles made the circular sweep through the Biltmore's gardens and terrace drive. The original gardens were, according to Atlanta's newspapers, designed to effect a "miniature Garden of Eden." The magnolias and jasmine were said to "bring visions of the Old South in the days of colonial chivalry."

The Neo-Georgian architecture of the Atlanta Biltmore was described as designed especially to reflect "the spirit of the South." It is significant to note that for the Los Angeles Biltmore Schultze designed in the less restrained Spanish renaissance manner. Hotel design in the 1920s was felt to embody a style and mark of its own, a "monumentality" capable of dramatizing the largely private activities within the hotel into a business of public concern. The Atlanta Biltmore was viewed by many as the appropriate setting for the "rapidly growing social and commercial activities" of the South. At a dinner speech marking the opening of the Biltmore, the pastor of the Second Baptist Church in Atlanta, after briefly glorifying a New South tradition, described Atlanta as the Southern city that "has defied urban adage and municipal proverb, a city which is Southern, but no longer sectional, Georgian, but national, too. If Atlanta stands for the New South, the Atlanta Biltmore stands for Atlanta."

The plans for the Biltmore, which included the separate apartment building in addition to the main hotel structure, were those of a new type of "apartment hotel" which became popular during the 1920s. S. Fullerton Weaver, the partner of Leonard Schultze, designer of the Atlanta Biltmore, described in detail the planning of the "modern apartment hotel" in the November 1924, issue of The Architectural Forum. Factors that Weaver considered important in the design and location of new apartment hotels were clearly taken into consideration in the design and location of the Atlanta Biltmore. These included the location of the Atlanta Biltmore in a "high-class residential" neighborhood, "restricted against business encroachment," yet close to downtown and facing a "wide boulevard," and the choice of a restrained exterior design which was felt to appeal to a higher class of prospective tenants. In 1969, the apartment building was reserved for hotel accommodations.

In the subsequent history of the Atlanta Biltmore, it was the home and meeting place of many of Atlanta's civic organizations, the first home of the Atlanta Historical Society, and the studios for over thirty years of WSB radio, the South's first radio station.

In 1967, the hotel joined the Sheraton chain. In 1979, the hotel was purchased by Biltmore Hospitality Partners.

The hotel closed in 1982 and was sold in 1984 to Renaissance Investment Corporation, which planned to convert both the smaller apartment tower and the enormous hotel tower to condominiums. They completed work on the apartment tower, but then went bankrupt in 1986 and had to sell the entire property. The newly renovated apartment tower was opened as the Biltmore Suites Hotel while the main building remained vacant for many years.

The complex was sold to Novare Group in January 1998, who gutted and transformed the main hotel building into office space, reopening it in 1999. The adjoining Biltmore Suites Hotel was closed in 1998 and converted to condominiums known as Biltmore House, which opened in 1999.

Building Description

The Atlanta Biltmore Hotel is located on a city block bounded by West Peachtree Street on the west, Cypress Street on the East, Fifth Street on the South, and Sixth Street on the North. The two structures are the original hotel building, which fronts West Peachtree Street, and the original apartment building, which fronts Fifth Street. Both structures were built in 1924 as part of the Biltmore project. The former apartment building is now reserved for hotel accommodations.

Both buildings are rectangular, monumental structures. The main building is eleven stories high, and the structure facing Fifth Street is ten stories. Both are constructed of reinforced concrete framing faced with red tapestry brick laid in English bond.

The style of detailing is neo-Georgian, emphasizing restrained Renaissance ornamentation in symmetrical patterning. Significant details include triangular and broken-scroll pediments over several window courses, brackets and dentils under the eaves, round arched windows framed by paired pilasters on the top story of the east elevation of the main building, and limestone corner pilasters. Front and rear entrances to the main building feature two-story porticoes with balustrades supported by paired corinthian columns. Entrance porticoes of the building fronting Fifth Street are similar, but not as wide, and the north portico of this building does not feature paired columns.

An important part of the original plan of the hotel was the rear terrace, which extended into an extensive garden courtyard. The construction of additional buildings on the property has largely usurped the garden space, and the terrace is no longer extant.

Interior remodeling in 1969 has changed some of the character of the original two-story lobby. Escalators leading from the West Peachtree entrance have replaced the marble stairs and the original black-and-gold marble-and-mahogany fittings have been replaced by lightweight wood detailing. Much of the rest of the hotel has remained essentially unaltered. The Georgian ballroom and main dining room feature basilican-like plans with arch orders, complete with engaged framing pilasters and paired engaged columns, which support an entablature, to demarcate a central space from side aisles. Both rooms also retain Adamesque plaster detailing on the ceilings.

Other structures on the property include a one-story exhibition hall fronting Sixth Street built in 1951, a two-story open-deck garage fronting Cypress Street, built in 1969, and, also built in 1969, a three-story hotel addition, with swimming pool, which abutts and is oriented parallel with the south elevation of the exhibition hall.

Hotel to left, apartment building to right (1979)

Apartment building, hotel behind (1979)

Street entrance facade to hotel (1979)

Detail of street entrance facade of hotel (1979)

Courtyard entrance, apartment building to left, hotel to right (1979)

Courtyard entrance to hotel to left, hotel addition to right (1979)

First floor lounge (1979)