This is the south facade of the Emily Winship Woodruff Maternity Center at Crawford Long Hospital by Philip Trammell Shutze et al 1945. It's big, beautiful, nearly invisible, almost completely walled in by hospital expansions. I don't know if it's still the maternity ward.
Unless you are in the new hospital tower, or on the top floor of the parking deck, you'll never see it. Unless it's raining I always park on top. Even from there the Maternity Center barely pokes its pretty head up, a zen view.
The parking deck elevator doesn't go to the top. But it's worth taking the stairs to get a close look. From the Architecture Tourist-mobile you can see the roof-top loggia, balustrade, urns, square towers with half-moon (not the proper term I'm sure) vents.
Here is a closer look at a squatty urn, the wavy decoration, the window entablature.
This boxy tower is like the one on the Academy of Medicine.
I have a personal connection to all the Shutze buildings I'm blogging about. A lot of business has been done to me at Crawford Long. I've been probed, scoped, cut, stitched and cured in there. But my very best visit was to the loggia itself.
See the picnic tables? I've been there. At the time the security department's office was up there. I went up to recover a lost ID and found that the security officers took their break on rocking chairs up there. Looks like they added a fence since I was there.
I hope all your Crawford Long visits are happy. And I hope Architecture Tourists park on top of the deck and look East toward this interesting block of Peachtree Street and the art deco Orr Doctors Building by Pringle & Smith...
More about this funky building another time.
and a look downtown.
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." No pro photography or pro architecture was committed in this post.
Thanks,
Terry
terry @ surf303.com