Francis Palmer Smith

Cox-Carlton Hotel (1925)

Rhodes-Haverty Building (1929)

William-Oliver Building (1930)

Druid Hills Presbyterian Church (1939–40), 458 Ponce de Leon Avenue NE, Virginia-Highland, Atlanta

Francis Palmer Smith (March 27, 1886 in Cincinnati, Ohio - March 5, 1971 in Atlanta, Georgia) was an architect active in Atlanta and elsewhere in the Southeastern United States. He was the director of the Georgia Tech College of Architecture from 1909–1922.

After working in Cincinnati, Ohio and then Columbus, Georgia, Smith was hired as professor of Georgia Tech's new architecture school in 1908. He transferred the curriculum of the University of Pennsylvania which emphasized Beaux-Arts architecture. He met Robert Smith Pringle and formed a partnership with him in 1922, Pringle and Smith.

Works

As part of Pringle and Smith:

• Numerous residences in the elite Buckhead and Druid Hills neighborhoods of Atlanta
• Grace United Methodist Church at 458 Ponce de Leon Avenue just west of Boulevard (1922–3)
• Cox-Carlton Hotel (1925)
• Norris Building (1926)
• Lynch Building (1926)
• Rhodes-Haverty Building (1929)
• William-Oliver Building (1930)
• W. W. Orr Building (1930)
• Standardized bottling plants for Coca-Cola

And other buildings in Miami, Jacksonville, and Sarasota, Florida.

Pringle and Smith developed plans for a grand 750-room hotel on the site of the Hotel Aragon at the southeast corner Peachtree and Ellis streets, but the more modest Collier Building (1932–1970s) was built on the site instead.

After Pringle and Smith was disbanded, Smith's further works included:

• Additional bottling plants in the Southeast
• Smaller houses in the Atlanta and Chattanooga suburbs
• Druid Hills Presbyterian Church in Virginia-Highland, Atlanta
• Episcopal Cathedral of Saint Philip on Peachtree Road at "Jesus Junction" in Buckhead

External links

• The Architecture of Francis Palmer Smith, Atlanta's Scholar-Architect, Robert M. Craig
• "Francis Palmer Smith", New Georgia Encyclopedia