Here’s the old beauty in 1972. It had been a long time since she showed first run Hollywood films, but Hollywood itself was pretty moribund at the time.
See the nice array of shops surrounding the ground floor. Plentiful commercial office space above were mostly professionals: accountants, doctors, lawyers, etc. The large gallery arches with tiers of bay windows, the circular corner offices, the beautiful brick work. Then tragedy strikes:
That’s the top of the back of the Coke sign on the Candler Building in the foreground. The Fulton Bank to the left and you can see the top of the Hilton above that. And the result
From what I can tell, the only people in the building were a doctor and his office assistant who discovered the fire and were rescued by the Atlanta Fire Department. And here she is being demolished later to be replaced by the Georgia Pacific tower.
ATLhistory 