Residents: Save beautiful, slowly fading former bank on Moreland Avenue
Advocates take to Facebook to save quirky, circular building
- harold_noe/flickr
Chances are you’ve driven down Moreland Avenue — perhaps on your way to Southern Comfort — and never noticed what once was C&S Bank.
Located approximately half a mile south of East Atlanta Village, the circular building built in the mid-1960s has fallen into disrepair and overgrown with kudzu.
Local architecture advocates weary of watching another historic structure disappear — and nearby neighborhood residents who don’t want to lose a quirky landmark — hope the remarkable building can be rehabbed and saved. They’ve taken the cause to Facebook and are urging other supporters to spread the word.
From the group’s Facebook page:
Built in 1965 by Kenneth Johnson as C&S Bank’s flagship modernist branch, this unique property was and is still considered one of Atlanta’s most memorable commercial buildings. Sitting on more than one acre of land with +/- 4000 SF, the round main building encompasses a lush garden and courtyard, a ‘floating’ vault, and an open air exposure to natural light. Tropical and exotic vegetation wind throughout the many platforms and the floor plan is in place to host a number of possibilities. Moreland Avenue, just north of Custer. Adjacent to Ormewood Park neighborhood and close to East Atlanta Village. Convenient to I-20.
This intriguing if dilapidated property was a branch of the Atlanta bank back in the day, and was the largest bank in the South in the ‘70s. C&S also seemed to have a thing for round/circular buildings: its headquarters in upper Downtown Atlanta was round, and so was the Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium it helped build. Interestingly and oddly, so is this climbing helix structure that we want to save....
Naturally, our neighborhoods would prefer to have it saved, rehabbed and brought up to code and used as a community center, a one-of-a-kind architectural jewel for community meetings… including appropriate branding for aforementioned architectural angels, of course.
Southeast Atlanta has so few public architectural treasures. Wouldn’t it feel great to save this one?Time might be running short, however. The building’s listed for sale — and according to DOCOMOMO’s Atlanta chapter, it’s been threatened with demolition. Anyone got $750,000 sitting around?
You can view up-close photos of the building, plus details of its interesting architecture, here. Tagged Flickr photos can be viewed here.