Mint Gallery just moved from the Cotton Docks to next door to the Cotton Docks on Sampson Street in the Old 4th Ward, halfway between Studioplex and Jacks pizza. It was my first time at Mint.
It's "young," energeticm and active in promoting art and music and art and music together.
It's in Atkins Park. It's been featured on the Homes Across America TV show. It's really black and - who would have thought it - wonderful. With a red tile roof and palm tree, what more could you want?
I love Atlanta's pink houses. This one is in the Old Fourth Ward.
December couldn't be busier or happier for Architecture Tourists. Here are 3 great events for the December 4-5-6, 2009
See 2 of Atlanta's original loft buildings and one converted school
Tour boatloads of amazing real lofts: Imagine 20' tall windows.
Buy artsy and practical Christmas presents and support local artists.
Hobnob with the cool arts crowd and intowners - Southern Style
Meet me (or avoid me if you act quickly).
The Stacks Third Annual Holiday Lofts + Artists Tour 18 Lofts, 31 Artists December 4th & 5th, 2009 Friday night, 4 December: 6p to 10p Saturday, 5 December: 2p to 8p At the Historic Fulton Bag & Cotton Mill in Cabbagetown, Atlanta, near Oakland Cemetary Tours: Saturday, 5 December: 12:30p & 2p R.S.V.P. stackshistorytour@gmail.com
Where you are certain meet the crews of Studio 102, Studio 204 (Chantal Gadd & Carla House), Studio 207 (Henry Leonard) and "Kitchen" Studio, and of Studio 106 (picture below) Crew of Studio 106 at Inman Park left to right: Korey Gotoo -- handbuilt Clay Barbara Briggs -hand-made lotions & soaps Tina Cox – Modern Pottery (in 2nd row) Ellen King - painter? Terri Brunson - Jewelry
"On October 8th (2011) at 6pm, EIGHT artists will fill FIVE vacant buildings along Edgewood Ave with work specific to each space. This exhibition will encompass a series of individual shows that are each challenging and poignant while simultaneously activating 5 vacant buildings along a street that needs a lifeline." - Dashboard Co-op's Ground Floor.
So the Architecture Tourist Art Patrol did a slow evening walk on Edgewood.
For most of my life here, Edgwood was an interesting area I just wanted to get through safely. It's on the way from downtown to Inman Park. now it's an emerging hip area retaining a bit of rough seediness.
The slow walk in the dark let us "see" a few things for the firs time, like this crinkle cut brickwork in light and shadow.
It's tighter than 90 degrees.
I'd guess this building is 80+ years old. The corner shows some wear and tear.
I never thought I'd see inside of Prince Hall Masonic Building on Auburn Avenue. I've been driving by for decades. It always caught my eye just two blocks west of Ebenezer Baptist Church. And I always thought it was Prince Hall, as in a "hall" named prince. Really! I had no idea until a few weeks ago. Was I the last person to find out?
This building contained the headquarters of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Ralph David Abernathy, Sr. worked here.
On the Old Fourth Ward Tour of Homes tour map it was just "300 Auburn Avenue," a modest caption for an important place. Thanks to the tour I can show you a little bit of the inside.
First: Prince Hall was a person. "Prince Hall (c.1735 – December 7, 1807),was an African American noted as a tireless abolitionist, for his leadership in the free black community in Boston, and as the founder of Prince Hall Masonry. - Wikipedia A bit about the building.
There's a daylight terrace level, two office floors, the masonic lodge is on the 3rd floor.
You enter the building proper from Auburn Avenue. This is the lobby / stair tower / elevator lobby looking out to the main entrance on Auburn Avenue.
Though empty now the first floor was SCLC Heaquarters until 2007. Dr. Martin Luther King's office was in this space, roughly where these folks are standing. For security reasons Dr. King's office didn't have a window. Vann Hall (dark blue shirt) gave the SCLC tour. He worked there back in the day.
Sweet Auburn.
The second floor housed working offices. We didn't tour there.
I wasn't prepared for third floor, for the masonic lodge.
It has terrific proportions, arched ceiling, clerestory windows, classical detailing. But it's not precious, not fragile. Folks have been meeting there for decades and you could sense that.
This is a space that makes people feel important, my favorite kind of room.
Enjoy this 360 look:
What are these things:
I don't know what you call these rectangles with indented corners but they required interesting brickwork.
The motif repeats inside the lodge.
Charles H. Hopson (1865 - 1941) "an important regional architect in Nova Scotia, was born in Reading, England and served an architectural apprenticeship there with Joseph Greenaway from 1880...appears to have left Nova Scotia in early 1903 and moved to Selma, Alabama...he later practised in Pensacola, Fla. and in Atlanta, Georgia." - Biographical Dictionary of Architects in Canada 1850 - 1950
Prince Hall Masonic Building is the 4th Hopson design that I know of in Atlanta. All are favorites of mine.
