The Georgian Terrace Hotel was constructed in 1910-1911 and first opened to the public on Monday, October 2, 1911. A throng of 5,000 enthusiastic Atlantans attended the hotel’s opening day festivities and it immediately became known as one of the finest hotels in the Southeast. Built of butter-colored brick in the French Renaissance style, the ten-story building was designed by New York architect William L. Stoddart. The hotel’s design featured many outstanding and elegant architectural details. The turreted corners, floor-to-ceiling Palladian-styled windows, and wide wrap-around columned terraces without, along with crystal chandeliers, white marble columns, elliptical staircases and Italian tiled floors within, brought an elegance unknown at that time in Atlanta.
The gracefully curving building, designed to conform to the city’s early trolley rail lines, which ran along Peachtree Street and Ponce de Leon Avenue, was instantly dubbed Atlanta’s “Paris hotel”. The hotel’s public spaces became popular gathering places for wealthy Atlantans, and the hotel emerged as a symbol of the resurrection of the Southern capital from its scorched Civil War ruins.
The Georgian Terrace soon became as famous for its guest list as for its elegant appointments. A number of notable guests visited the hotel in the early part of the century, including Calvin Coolidge, Waren G. Harding, Charles Lindbergh, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tallulah Bankhead and Rudolph Valentino. Opera great Enrico Caruso, along with members of The Metropolitan Opera, were guests at the hotel for two weeks during the spring of 1913. They began a tradition that continued for 75 years, as the Met singers became artists-in-residence during their annual tours to Atlanta.
Read more....
Built in 1911, the Georgian Terrace Hotel is a 10-story building of brick and marble designed as a southern version of a Parisian hotel. The Peachtree Street facade is composed of a two-story high window arcade set under a wide cornice supported on narrow pilasters. The center portion of the facade is stepped back and since the cornice remains unbroken, the shallow entrance portico is created. Above this two-story base, the facade remains relatively unadorned until the actual cornice line of the building. The cornice is of highly-decorative terra-cotta flush with the face of the building. The interior of the Georgian Terrace features a marble lobby, general management offices, a glass-enclosed lounging room, telephone booths, and elevators on the first floor. The hotel also includes a dining room, cafe, and a Ladies' Carriage entrance. The Ponce de Leon side of the hotel originally included the "Terrace Garden" designed to represent a tropical garden. Under exotic plants of widespread foliage, green and white tables and chairs were spread to resemble the cafes of Europe.
Read more....
The Georgian Terrace Hotel is open during normal business hours. Visit their website at thegeorgianterrace.com.