Atlanta businessman Ivan Allen Jr. created the Six Point Forward Atlanta plan in 1961 as President of the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce. The civic leader sought to promote Atlanta as a major, progressive, and growing Southern city. His blueprint focused on school desegregation, highway construction, urban renewal projects, public transportation, the Forward Atlanta public relations campaign to attract businesses and tourists, and construction of a new sports stadium and city auditorium.
Allen put this plan into action as Atlanta’s Mayor from 1962 to 1970. Using urban renewal as the economic development tool that sanctioned demolition of blighted neighborhoods, Atlanta leaders razed Buttermilk Bottom, a Black neighborhood that suffered from a lack of municipal investment, to build the Atlanta Civic Center. With an extensive portfolio of municipal, health care, civic, and military projects, Robert & Company provided the architectural and engineering design for the $10.0 million project featuring a 4,600-seat theater, a convention hall, and meeting spaces.
Robert & Company architect Harold Montague designed the Atlanta Civic Center in the New Formalism architectural style that flourished in the United States from the 1960s through the early 1970s for projects, such the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City. Atlanta Civic Center is distinguished by its buff brick exterior walls with intricate patterns, classical-inspired arches and colonnades, textured concrete accents to mimic stone, and fountains at the main plaza.
(Courtesy Atlanta History Center)
On March 4, 1968, the Atlanta Civic Center opened with a performance by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra with conductor Robert Shaw. Musicians played on the largest stage in the Southeast. Attendees entered the theater through a hexagonal-shaped two-story foyer with two monumental staircases and Rambusch chandeliers hung from a deep blue ceiling. The architect’s use of metallic gold wallcovering and ceiling grilles, red carpeting, red and gold theatre seating, and walnut wood finishes elevated visitor experiences at the building.
Although construction of the Georgia World Congress Center in 1976 reduced demand for the 125,000 square-foot Civic Center convention space, Atlanta residents and visitors attended concerts, touring productions of Broadway musicals, seminars, comedy acts, high school graduations, and commencement ceremonies at this cultural hub for decades. In subsequent years, complaints about theater acoustics and sightlines and competition from newer venues led to the closure of the Atlanta Civic Center in 2014.
Renewed interest in the 19-acre building site has sparked increased interest in the renamed Boisfeuillet Jones Atlanta Civic Center. Atlanta Housing acquired the complex in 2017. Last year, the housing authority announced the first phase of redevelopment with the construction of 148 affordable senior apartments on the Civic Center property. Building upon this momentum, the Atlanta Civic Center may once again be the community anchor and icon that it was in the past.
