16 Story Office Building in Atlanta GA

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The Healey Building is the final tall office building design of the Atlanta firm of Morgan and Dillon before World War I and is considered by many of the architects in Atlanta today to be the finest of the city's early skyscrapers. "They feel that the verticality created in the Healey Building by the (use of the) Gothic style is most suitable for a tall building. They praise the lightness and clean lines of the elevations and openness of interior planning."

The sweeping verticality of the structure is produced by the use of clustered piers which rise throughout the building's sixteen-story high exterior, while the "lightness and clean lines" of both the interior and exterior is solely attributable to the qualities of the building's neo-Gothic style. Surprisingly, however, the actual amount of Gothic detailing used on the outer face of the Healey Building has been held to a minimum. "This Gothic detail does not, however, produce a Gothic revival tower such as New York's Woolworth Building of 1911-1913." It does, though, produce a feeling of elegance and is quite different from that on the interior where one finds that the Gothic references, especially in the lobby and rotunda, produce an eclectic effect.

W. T. Downing, an Atlanta architect of some renown, was an associate architect with the firm of Morgan and Dillon while the Healey Building was undergoing design and construction. According to an interview with a contemporary architect who worked for him conducted by Elizabeth A. Lyon for her doctoral dissertation at Emory University, Downing was most probably the person responsible for the actual design of this structure. It is interesting to note also that the complete design of the building was never fully realized. The building as it presently stands, with its single sixteen-story tower and arcades, represents only a little more than half of the original design. It is known, however, that the designer of the Healey Building initially contemplated twin towers, one fronting Forsyth Street and one on Broad Street between Poplar Street on the North and Walton Street on the south, all to be joined by a low connecting element containing a top-lighted rotunda. Only the Forsyth Street, or western, tower and central rotunda were completed before World War I intervened and the builder, William T. Healey, died in 1920. Instead of the second tower, a row of low structures for commercial and retail use were erected along the Broad Street frontage.

Building Description

The Healey Building, located at 57 Forsyth Street, in the Central Business District of Atlanta, is a handsome warm-grey structure having a two-story high base differentiated from the floors above by a greater proportion of void to solid elements, restrained gothic detail, and unusual display window design. Above the base floors are fourteen floors of office space having large, simple windows and little ornamental detail except for the prominent sloping window sills and the gothic-type piers which extend without interruption from base to cornice between each window. These piers, which terminate near the cornice line in round arches add to the verticality of the building by emphasizing the vertical, as opposed to the horizontal, elements of the structure.

The Healey Building falls into the commercial style category but does not conform in all respects to the criteria for that style. The large facades have slightly re-entrant central sections rather than the central projection usually accepted as an allowable variation from the more typical straight facade. The cornice treatment is strongly expressed and is dominant in the manner of Sullivan rather than the more restrained cornice treatments common to the commercial style. The east wall of the elevator penthouse is in the plane of the main, east facade and provides an interruption to the cornice line of the east side of the building rather than preserving the more usual level skyline. This penthouse is expressed as a decorative rather than a utilitarian element of the overall design, with the necessary stacks employed as decorative elements at the corners.

The strong vertical expression of the facade and the restrained use of pointed arches and tracery result in a definite gothic character for the Healey Building. The fenestration is unusual in that windows of two distinctly different sizes and proportions are used. The ten central bays of each of the two long sides have paired, relatively narrow, double-hung windows while the remainder of the exterior has much wider double-hung windows used singly. Both window types are of the same height. The display windows at the street level are particularly worth attention; the detailing of these projecting show windows is both unusual and elegant throughout the building. The upper of the floors in the Healey Building has a different window sill treatment as well as an arched gothic-type detailing above the windows. The strong projecting cornice forms the cap of the building.

As in many of the structures of this era in Atlanta, the entrance floor lobby of the Healey Building extends from the street on one side completely through the block to the street on the other side. In this case, one passes from Forsyth Street on the west to Broad Street on the east, passing through the rotunda and the buildings on the Broad Street frontage; connection from Walton Street to this block-long lobby is achieved by an entrance from that street into the Healey Building's rotunda.

The generous allocation of public space on the ground floor is also typical of the upper floors of the Healey Building. The corridors are appreciably wider than those of more recent office buildings and, because the two facing banks of elevators are separated by the wide, main floor lobby, unusually large and rather inefficient elevator lobbies are created on each of the upper floors.

East Facade (1976)

Looking east from Forsyth Street Entrance (1976)

Facing southeast (1976)

West Facade, Forsyth Street (1976)

Interior (1976)

East Facade (1976)