The Blair Building is an Art Moderne office building located in Decatur, Georgia. Built in 1939 by the Farnell Blair Company, the company used the second floor for its offices.
In 1946, Guy Rutland Sr. purchased the building to use as the headquarters for his trucking company, real estate business, and farm operations. Rutland served in the state legislature from 1953 to 1964. The building stayed in the Rutland family until 1994.
It was listed on the National Register of Historic Buildings in 2002.
Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes (1971-2002) was a member of the pioneering rap and R&B group TLC. She combined creative and musical forces with Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins and Rozonda “Chilli” Thomas to create such hits as “Waterfalls” and “No Scrubs.” They were one of the most successful musical acts of the 1990s. Tragically, she died in a car accident in Honduras in 2002 at age 30.
She is buried in Hillandale Memorial Gardens in Lithonia, Georgia.
Charmaine Minniefield is an artist-activist whose mission is to save Black stories “as a radical action of social justice.” Minniefield’s “The Praise House Project” celebrates the history of praise houses and ring shouts. It is a multimedia experience. When the Praise House Project is open, the inside of the house is an in-depth visual and sound experience.
Initially built on plantations, praise houses, or pray’s houses, were small one-room structures where enslaved people would gather to worship. Praise houses used to be found all along the coast, but only a few remain.
Ring shouting involves moving in a circle, shuffling and stamping feet, and clapping hands while in prayer. The earliest known example of ring shouting in the United States was in the 1840s. This practice is believed to be tied back to West African traditions. Ring shouting is a ritual celebrated when a person accepts Christianity. It is still practiced today, and the evolution of the practice can still be seen in Black congregations today, especially among the surviving Gullah Geechee communities. The McIntosh County Shouters out of the Briar Patch community in Georgia keep the practice alive today. They still use a praise house today.
So far, the Praise House Project has been displayed at Oakland Cemetery, Emory University, and downtown Decatur, Georgia. The Oakland Cemetery installation was the first exhibition. It commemorated the lives of over 800 enslaved people who were buried in the cemetery. The Emory exhibition was on the grounds of the Glenn Memorial United Methodist Church in 2023. Currently, the Praise House is located at the corner of Trinity Place and Commerce Drive to honor and remember the historic Black community of Beacon Hill. This community was settled after the Civil War and began to be erased in the 1930s as Decatur expanded. The next exhibit will be at South-view Cemetery.
To read more about The Praise Project, please visit the website.
Briar Hills Historic Condominiums were built and designed in the 1940s by real estate developer, Solloway Realty Company, and architect, David S. Cuttino. Briar Hills is located between the Virginia-Highlands and Druid Hills neighborhood on Briarcliff Road. The mid-century modern development was the first cooperative built in Atlanta. Initially, it was created as a Jewish community. It is a contributing property to the Druid Hills Historic District.
Artist rendering featured in the June 1, 1947 issue of the Atlanta JournalAdvertisement in the June 11, 1948 issue of the Atlanta Constitution
The Georgia Mental Health Institute (GMHI) was opened in 1965 on Asa Candler Jr.’s Briarcliff estate grounds. The Brutalist building was a psychiatric hospital built as a joint project between Emory University and the state of Georgia. Emory doctors provided some of the patient care, and Emory medical students received some of their training at the hospital.
Image from the January 10, 1965 article in The Atlanta Journal
The Institute was dedicated on November 18, 1965. Outside the main administration building, the campus had several cottages where patients stayed. These cottages all had tunnels leading to the main building.
GMHI closed in 1997. Emory University purchased the campus in hopes of turning it into another campus, but the idea was never implemented. While the building was in disuse, the Atlanta film industry took off, and the space began being utilized for filming. Most notably, the building was used as the Hawkins National Laboratory in the Netflix TV show Stranger Things. In 2022, Emory University leased the campus to be used as a senior living community. It is expected that many of the buildings will be demolished.
Asa “Buddie” Candler Jr. (1880-1953) was the son of Asa Griggs Candler (1851-1929), a politician and businessman wbo purchased the Coca-Cola recipe from John Pemberton in 1888. Buddie Candler helped build the Coca-Cola empire as helped in the development of bottling locations across the United States.
Known as a bit of an iconoclast, Buddie Candler did things his way (I highly recommend Sara Butler’s book and website for a deep dive into Buddie’s life story). In 1910, Candler moved from the elite neighborhood, Inman Park, to Briarcliff Farm. By 1916, the farmhouse life was no longer for him, and he wanted to build a palatial estate on the property.
A view of the remaining greenhouses
Architect Charles Frazier designed the home, which was completed in 1922. The Georgian Revival home was expanded several times over the years. It featured a music room, a commercial-sized kitchen, seven bedrooms, and a solarium, among other things. The estate featured a zoo, servants’ quarters, tennis courts, stables, greenhouses, and a community pool. The zoo featured a collection of animals that were eventually given to start the Grant Park Zoo.
A front view of the more elaborately styled greenhouse
The home was sold in 1948 as a veterans hospital, but that never happened. It became the Georgian Clinic, later the Dekalb County Addiction Center. It later became part of the Georgia Mental Health Institute.
The building is now owned by Emory University, and plans are underway to restore it and turn it into a nursing home.
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