Mr. Fox's Neighborhood
Written by Hal Doby
April 2005, Last Updated February 2, 2013
The Yaarab Temple Mosque that became known as the Fox Theatre
was
built in the section of
Metropolitan Atlanta that is now called Midtown. This area is located
next to and north of Atlanta's Downtown business district. coming north
on Peachtree Street. The Midtown District generally begins
around
Emory Midtown Hosptial, formerly called Crawford Long Hospital, and
contiues just past Fourteenth Street. From along the Downtown Connector
(the junction of I-75 and I-85) it travels east along Ponce de Leon
Avenue, going
towards Decatur and ends at the intersection of Moreland Avenue.
It was composed of a lot of small old businesses and many fashionable
houses. During the time
the Fox was built, it was considered to be Northern Suburban
Atlanta. It was a fringe area that many considered to be outside the
Downtown area and just far out enough to be within range to work in the
city and live outside of it. In Midtown you would see a
typical
suburban setting with small businesses lining the main roads
with
the houses being a block or so down from. that on the smaller side
streets.
As time marched forward, the area continued to grow and expanded into
multiple suburban districts. A Peachtree Street became the major road
that big business were built on as well as West Peachtree Street,
Spring Street, Juniper Street, and Piedmont Avenue. Major Businesses
eventually continued down Peachtree Street while Piedmont became more
residential once it past Fourteenth Street. If you continued
on
Peachtreet Street, past Fourteenth it continued on to the Brookhaven
suburb on the way
to Buckhead, which turned into a third major business district for the
City of Atlanta.
But at the the Fox was built, there were no
interstate highways and the area in which the Downtown Connector was
built was
full of fashionable houses. It was suburbia.
When I became involved with the Fox, Midtown had turned into an area
that had fallen into hard times. Urban sprawl had caused most
people to move out of the city of Atlanta to homes outside the City
Limits due in part to the establishment of the Eisenhower Interstate
System that allowed people to live far outside the city and yet be able
to
travel at relatively high speed to and from their homes to where they
worked in the City of Atlanta. Ponce de Leon Avenue was once a very
prestigeous
place to own a home at one point in time, but by the mid-70s, most of
these huge homes had been turned into apartment houses, office
buildings, or were in very run-down condition. From Peachtree
Street down to Moreland Avenue, Ponce deLeon was the place for
drifters, homeless, and vagrants to congregate.
the crime rate was high and very rampant.
When the Fox Theatre was spared the wrecking ball, many acknowledged
the Fox's success caused a
domino effect around it. After the Fox was saved, the
area around the Fox began to flourish and prosper.
But before the Fox's cornerstone was laid, four prominent buildings had
already been erected across the street and in close proximity to the
Yaarab Temple's property. In the 1970s and 1980s, four
were named as National Historic Landmarks just as the Fox had been
honored. As far as I know, no other place in the United States are
there four large buildings on the National Historic Trust's register
and that makes Mr. Fox's Neighborhood very special. Let's take a look
at those neighbors.
The Georgian Terrace Hotel
The Georgian Terrace Hotel opened for
business in 1911. For
many years, the hotel enjoys the distinction of the most luxurious and
prestigious hotel in Atlanta well into the second half of the 20th
Century before falling into decline. During its heyday, the Terrace was
the place to stay for any person of distinction. When Gone with the
Wind premiered at the Loew's Grand, all the stars and dignitaries
stayed at the Terrace. In 1968, John Wayne, who directed and starred in
the Green Berets, premiered the movie at the Fox Theatre. His entourage
stayed at the Terrace.
By 1980, the hotel had fallen hard into decline and decay. The
decision was made to close the Terrace. The hotel
was boarded up, but that didn't stop transient drifters, drug
addicts, and the homeless from breaking into the hotel to find a place
to stay. Repeatedly, people set fires in attempts to stay warm
which repeatedly got out of control set the building
on fire. The Atlanta City
Fire Department was able to quickly put out the fires and prevent the
building from suffering major structural damage.
In 1987, a row of small shops and a small music club that resided
between the Georgian Terrace and the Cox-Carlton Hotel was destroyed by
fire. Of note, in the rear of that building was the Agora
Ballroom, a popular music venue that a lot of performers that
played the Fox as well as members of the Fox House Staff would frequent
after events. One such occasion was when the Rolling Stones
played the Fox in 1981. The 1987 fire damage was so bad, what remained
had to be down, After which, the property was
cleared. .
After nearly eight years of sitting vacant, in 1988 a Japanese-American
joint venture of Sato Kogyo America Corporation and
E.F. Howington Company, purchased the Georgian
Terrace. Their
plan was to not only renovate and restore the Terrace, but to create a
complex more than twice the hotel's original size. they built
an
expansion to the original structure on the adjacent property where once
the Agora Ballroom sat between the Georgian Terrace and what
was
the Cox-Carlton Hotel, then a Days Inn. Architectural details were
removed from the original building, restored, and then copied for
incorporation into the new addition. The result was a stunning blend
that is almost indistinguishable from the 1911 structure that reopened
in 1991. Once the project was completed, it contained: 294 apartments,
52,000 square feet of retail space, and a 700 space parking deck.
After a few years of operation, the business model was considered a
failure and building was sold. The new owners resumed
operation as a hotel and have enjoyed good success ever since.
The Ponce Apartments
The Ponce DeLeon Avenue Apartmentswere built in
1913 on the
other side of Ponce DeLeon from the Georgian
Terrace Hotel. Prior to conctruction, the building was
concieved
to be about double the size it wound up being. It was conceived to be a
luxurious home for the well to do, complete with servent quarters on
premises. The Atlanta Preservation Center reports the building's
original configuration had one or two huge apartments with up to 5
bedrooms each and servant quarters on each floor. On the last two
floors were efficiency apartments for single men. On the roof are to
magnificent loft-style apartments. It was commonplace for fantastic
parties to be thrown on the roof of the building in its heyday. The
building has undergone several changes and reconfigurations in
its
lifetime. In the early 1980s, the building was renovated into
condominiums.
The Cox-Carlton Hotel was constructed in 1926
across Peachtree
Street just down from the Georgian Terrace Hotel.
The hotel originally operated a residential hotel for
single
men. It had matrons stationed on each floor to help its male
occupants that
were unfamiliar with doing day to day chores that were once considered
the
exclusive domain of women. They also were there to make sure no
"hanky-panky" went on inside the hotel!
In later life, The Cox-Carlton later went on to become a
standard
hotel. In the 1970s the
hotel became part of the Days Inn hotel/motel chain. In the early
2000s, the hotel closed, then went through one or two owners
that
attempted to
operate the hotel independently Around 2005, the
hotel was
renovated and started
operations as the Hotel Indigo,
a designer boutique hotel. It continues to operate as that today and
seems to be very successful.
Erlanger Opera House
Also known as: Tower Theater, Atlanta Theater, Martin's
Cinerama, and Columbia Theater
583 Peachtree St,
Opened: approximately 1890, Razed: 1995
Located at 583 Peachtree Street, The Erlanger Opera House was locared
next door to the North Avenue Presbyterian Church.
It
started life in 1890 as a playhouse with a main stage
and four floors
of backstage dressing rooms. There were 672 seats on the main orchestra
level,
190 in the first balcony, and 128 in the second balcony. Later in life,
the theater was renamed the Tower Theater
In the 1950's, the Martin Theater chain took over the
theater
and completely renovated the auditorium. They removed the stage to
accomodate a 164 foot by 34 foot curved Cinerama
ribbon
screen. They added a new projection booth to house the
three-projector Cinerama system. Speakers were placed around the
auditorium for the 7-track Cinerama multi-channel surround sound
system. The lobby was paneled and the entire building was recarpeted
with gold colored carpet. A false ceiling that was hung between the
first and second balconies. This reduced the theater's seating
capacity to 862.
It was renamed Martin's Cinerama and was the only
theatre in
Atlanta equipped to show three projector Cinerama films.
Later,
the Atlanta Roxy was also converted into a Cinerama theater. Cinerama
was a unqiue film format owned by the Cinerama Corporation. From 1953
to 1962, only ten Cinerama movies were produced and each one was shown
for exttended runs at each Cinerama theater. The three film strip
Cineramam process was a technical nightmare for the time and was not
only hard to present, but hard to film. Yet the pure spectacle of a
Cinerama film was so amazing, it was quite popular and worth the
problems it presented.
In the
early 1960s, Cinerama adopted a single projector film system and the
theater quickly adapted. They replaced the three projector system
with two dedicated 70MM projectors with carbon arc
lamps and
prescription ground lenses. This produced a bright, beautiful picture
and the Martin became the #1 place for big epic movies. "Mary
Poppins", "The Sound of Music",
and "Camelot" were among the
attractions. In a time that most movies come and go in 4 weeks, "The
Sound of Music" played for an amazing 18 months and
over four decades later, I clearly remember my father taking me to see
it there.
In 1968, the Walter Reade Organization was looking for a venue
to show their two-part six-hour "War and Peace"
epic, and took over the lease. The theater was renamed the Atlanta
Theater. "2001: A Space Odyssey"
enjoyed a spectacular 70MM run. Prior to opening "Fiddler
on the Roof" in 1972, they had removed the Cinerama
ribbon screen and installed a much smaller 145 foot by 19
foot solid screen to meet the technical requirements of the
'experts' from United Artists pictures. "Fiddler" was a big box-office
disappointment.
In February of 1973, prior to exhibiting "Man
of LaMancha", the smaller screen was replaced with
a larger one, 123 foot by 46 foot, though still not the size of the
original Cinerama screen. Reade decided to give quality one last chance
and booked in "This Is Cinerama"
in 70mm. Since the old three projector Cinerama system were long gone,
the movie was shown with one projector using a special anamorphic
projection lens. The new screen was once again replaced after only six
weeks with a huge 195 foot by 35 foot curved screen. It was the larger
than the original Cinerama screen than Martin installed. The curve was
so deep that when you stood in the middle, even with the edges of the
screen, it was 15' to the center. "This Is Cinerama"
looked great but did almost no business.
The Reade Organization closed the Atlanta Theater in the late
1970s
after over ten years of inconsistent and often low patronage. It is
unknown when it happened, but the building became the property of the
North Avenue Presbyterian Church whose sanctuary was located next door
at the corner of Peachtree Street and North Avenue. In 1982, the church
leased the theater to a private entrepreneur who reopened the
theater as the Columbia Theater. It reopened with a
70MM run
of the musical "Annie".
The Columbia made a name for itself by featuring first-run
science
fiction and fantasy films that would do justice being shown on the
large Cinerama style screen .Fans of those genres flocked to the
theater to
see these films on the largest screen in the Southeast. Sadly, business
would severely drop off after the first few weeks of a film's run but
the studios would demand conttacts that required the exhubutor to run
the film for a number of months. So while the Columbia did
terrific business during the first half of a
contracted run, it did very lttle business from the remainder of the
run. This dilluted its profits to almost zero. After several
years, the theater was not profitable to operate. I
believe the the theater changed hands one last time, but its
fortunes did not change, and the theater eventually was permanently
shuttered. In April 1995 the church demolished the building
and
constructed a parking lot on the site. The 70mm projectors, lenses, and
other equipment were purchased by the (Atlanta) Fox Theatre. this was
the last major theater to be razed in Atlanta. After the
Columbia
was gone, none of the original major movie houses
besides the
Fox and the Rialto remained in downtown Atlanta.
