It's Emory University's front door per the master plan by Henry Hornbostel. This particular gate has been here since 1947. It may be Emory's gate but it has a direct connection to Georgia Tech.
The original gate consists of the 2 tall columns and the iron arch. Trucks and buses bashed it so badly that in 1971 Emory moved it from the road to a sidewalk. Now it's back where it belongs with two new short columns encompassing the sidewalks. The landscaping looks pretty good for February 7.
They made the street 1-way in, they dug the roadway lower, and they raised the arch. Now it's tall enough for buses and firetrucks. See the 2 1/2' extension at the top of the original iron column? It's the section at the level of "HAYGOOD."
You can see the first of Emory's campus buildings. Emory's marble buildings with red roofs echo the marble and red brick of the gate.
It pays to look closely at the columns. From a distance they doesn't look all that fussy. Up close there is quite a bit of classic detail and an artichoke to boot.
The iron work get lost in the trees unless you look closely.
Attention fellow Georgia Tech folks. Remember Hopkins Dorm? Well this gate honors Isaac Stiles Hopkins a remarkable man and president of Emory. A natural born engineer he became the Georgia School of Technology's first president.
University Architect Jen Fabrick describes the renovation in this video
I'm going to the 2010 Philip Trammell Shutze Awards on February 20th in Atlanta You should too. In the run up to the awards I'm doing a batch of posts about Shutze in my "neighborhood."
Terry
P.S.
Here is a bit more of Shutze designed iron work.
TK