by Beth Szczepanski

Created on: November 02, 2008   Last Updated: May 14, 2010

The story of Atlanta, GA can be read in its architecture. The city's many beautiful and interesting buildings reflect its exuberance during boom times and its hope for brighter days during difficult times. Although the city's history is relatively short, it is home to hundreds of beautiful and interesting buildings representing a wide range of architectural styles to satisfy any visiting architecture buff.

Atlanta exploded into existence over the course of fourteen years prior to the Civil War. The town was founded in 1837 by the Western and Atlantic Railroad as the terminus of a line connecting Georgia to the Midwest. The town boomed like a Western mining town as railway men and merchants flocked to the area.

Most of the buildings dating to prior to the Civil War were destroyed by General Sherman's forces in 1864, but a few examples can still be seen. These include the Tullie Smith House, a farmhouse dating to the 1840s located just outside the city. This plantation-plain style house is now open as a museum, and exemplifies the smaller-scale farming common to Antebellum Atlanta.

Most of the commercial buildings constructed between the end of the Civil War and the turn of the twentieth century in Atlanta feature a straightforward Italianate style inspired by the city's vital rail depots, but churches and government buildings dating from this era are more elaborate in style. The Immaculate Conception Church, completed in 1873, features a whimsical style combining elements of the Victorian and the Gothic in its construction, while the Central Presbyterian Church, completed in 1885, displays an English Gothic style that takes one right back to the Old World. The state capitol building features an imposing Neo-Classical style, complete with a golden dome. These buildings demonstrate Atlanta's resolve to pull itself out of the Civil War era and take its place as the cultural center of the New South.

Around the turn of the century, Atlanta was again booming, and architects began designing high rises to house the offices and apartments needed by railroad executives and clerks. Though these early skyscrapers were designed more for function than for aesthetic beauty, they still have some appealing attributes. The eleven-storey Flatiron Building, completed in 1897 and the seventeen-storey Candler Building, completed in 1906, both feature quasi-Classical ornamentation on their facades. The Classical flavor continues with the First Church of Christ Scientist, completed

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