Description

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Francis Palmer Smith was the principal designer of Atlanta-based Pringle and Smith, one of the leading firms of the early twentieth-century South. Smith was an academic eclectic who created traditional, history-based architecture grounded in the teachings of the cole des Beaux-Arts. As The Architecture of Francis Palmer Smith shows, Smith was central to the establishment of the Beaux-Arts perspective in the South through his academic and professional career.

After studying with Paul Philippe Cret at the University of Pennsylvania, Smith moved to Atlanta in 1909 to head the new architecture program at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He would go on to train some of the South's most significant architects, including Philip Trammell Shutze, Flippen Burge, Preston Stevens, Ed Ivey, and Lewis E. Crook Jr.

In 1922 Smith formed a partnership with Robert S. Pringle. In Atlanta, Savannah, Chattanooga, Jacksonville, Sarasota, Miami, and elsewhere, Smith built office buildings, hotels, and Art Deco skyscrapers; buildings at Georgia Tech, the Baylor School in Chattanooga, and the Darlington School in Rome, Georgia; Gothic Revival churches; standardized bottling plants for Coca-Cola; and houses in a range of traditional "period" styles in the suburbs. Smith's love of medieval architecture culminated with his 1962 masterwork, the Cathedral of St. Philip in Atlanta. As his career drew to a close, Modernism was establishing itself in America. Smith's own modern aesthetic was evidenced in the more populist modern of Art Deco, but he never embraced the abstract machine aesthetic of high Modern.

Robert M. Craig details the role of history in design for Smith and his generation, who believed that architecture is an art and that ornament, cultural reference, symbolism, and tradition communicate to clients and observers and enrich the lives of both.

This book was supported, in part, by generous grants from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and the Georgia Tech Foundation, Inc.

About the Author

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Robert M. Craig is a professor emeritus of architectural history at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is the author of Bernard Maybeck at Principia College: The Art and Craft of Building, Atlanta Architecture: Art Deco to Modern Classic, 1929-1959, and coauthor, with Paul Goldberger, of John Portman: Art and Architecture.

Praise For…

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“This is how America was designed! A thoroughly captivating study of an architect who taught generations of students at Georgia Tech and built hundreds of houses in a variety of styles, churches, cathedrals, schools, Coca-Cola bottling plants, high rises, and many other buildings throughout the South. Beautifully illustrated with original drawings and vintage and new photographs.”—Richard Guy Wilson, Commonwealth Professor and Chair of Architectural History at the University of Virginia

"During a career that spanned half a century, Francis Palmer Smith developed an enviable general practice. His firm was much sought after for designing elegant residences, but also for schools, office buildings, churches, bottling plants, hotels, and apartment towers. Collectively, this work had a significant impact on the landscape of metropolitan Atlanta, especially during the interwar decades. Robert Craig’s meticulous account not only adds an important chapter to the city’s history, but should inform practitioners and scholars alike of the high design standards attained by many architects of his generation nationwide."—Richard Longstreth, George Washington University


"This monumental and fascinating study not only details the career and output of one of Atlanta’s most important architects, but provides the twentieth century milieu of national styles, and local and regional residential, commercial, religious and educational development in which the designer and teacher worked. It also contributes significantly to our understanding and preservation of Georgia’s historic twentieth century built environment."—Elizabeth Lyon, Georgia State Historic Preservation Officer, retired


"Robert Craig has crafted the definitive account of the life and architectural career of Francis Palmer Smith, a true pioneer in the building of twentieth-century Atlanta and the South. With his meticulous details and rich illustrations, Craig has elevated Smith, a scholar, teacher, and master architect, to his rightful place."—Richard Laub, Director, Heritage Preservation Program, Georgia State University