Southern Bell Telephone Company Building

skyscraper
art-deco
GE
Atlanta

About the Southern Bell Telephone Company Building in Atlanta
1. Building Catalogations
Architect and team
Architectureal style
Spaces and uses
Structure and materials

The Southern Bell Telephone Company Building is an Art-deco skyscraper designed by Marye, Alger and Vinour and built in 1929 in Atlanta, GE.

Southern Bell Telephone Company Building is not the only name you might know this building by though. The building is, or has also been known as AT&T Communications Building.

Its precise street address is 51 Peachtree Center Avenue, Atlanta, GE. You can also find it on the map here.

The Southern Bell Telephone Company Building is a structure of significant importance both for the city of Atlanta and the United States as a nation. The building embodies the distinctive characteristic features of the time in which it was built and the Art Deco style. Because of that, the Southern Bell Telephone Company Building was officially included in the National Register of Historic Places on June 6^th 1978.

The building has been restored 2 times over the years to ensure its conservation and adaptation to the pass of time. The main restoration works happened in 1948 and 1963.

Building's timeline

Construction completed

1929

Restoration

1948

Restoration

1963

Added to the NRHP

1978

years ago

2024

1947 to 1948 - Additions.
1963 - Space additions and microwave broadcast tower installation on the roof.

Architect and team

Marye, Alger and Vinour was the architecture firm in charge of the architectural design.

Architectural Style

The Southern Bell Telephone Company Building can be categorized as an Art-deco building.

The Art Deco movement flourished during the 1920s and 1930s, with many historians marking the outbreak of World War II as its final decline. Even though a couple of decades might not seem as much, the Art Deco movement had a great impact on architecture, and it's widely represented in many American cities due to the development boom that happened during that time.

Art Deco marked the abandonment of traditional historicism and the embracement of modern living and the age of the machine. In architecture, that meant leaving behind the ornaments of Beux-Arts and Neo-Gothic buildings and instead favoring simplicity and visual impact through geometric shapes, clean lines, and symmetrical designs. Ornaments were still an important part of the design, but they became bold and lavish, and were often inspired by ancient cultures or industrial imagery, instead of nature.

The Southern Bell Telephone Company Building was completed in 1929, right when the Art Deco movement was at its peak, so it kind of went with the trend at that time.

Spaces & Uses

The Southern Bell Telephone Company Building reaches an architectural height of 381ft (116m), 433ft (132m) if you count the antenna. It has a total of 14 floors.

Ever since opening its doors to the public in 1929, the Southern Bell Telephone Company Building has mainly been used as Commercial space.

Materials & Structure

The Southern Bell Telephone Company Building uses a frame structure made of steel columns and concrete slabs.

A frame structure uses a combination of beams and columns to sustain the building's weight. The walls in this case are non-load bearing, which allows for more flexibility when distributing the interior spaces.

The facade is non-load bearing either, as it is common in frame structure type buildings.

From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features carved details on the stone along the first 6 stories. The main door stands out thanks to a stepped stone arch that frames a large window above the lintel.

Sources

npgallery.nps.gov