A historical perspective: The past can't infringe on the future

Aug. 1—DECATUR — I suppose it was just a coincidence, but then again sometimes things happen for a reason. On the same day I participated in a walking tour of historic downtown Decatur, I saw reports about the recent brouhaha over proposed alterations to a historic building in Albany.

According to news reports, Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital and Albany Technical College were seeking approval from the Albany Dougherty Historic Preservation Commission to turn the old Albany Middle School into a living and learning center. The proposal was denied.

The plan was to keep the original façade of the building, which is located directly across the street from Phoebe's main hospital, but demolish most of the structure. The first floor would be the home of Albany Tech's nursing program, which would include classrooms, a health career education center, meeting rooms, library/resource center and other amenities. The second and third floors would include eighty apartments in order to provide affordable housing for students.

This would almost double the size of the old school building at a cost of about $40 million. I could well-imagine this to not only be an asset to the community, but included on a tour of Albany's historic properties. The whole affair seemed to be in contrast to Decatur's approach to historic properties.

The Decatur Architecture Walking Tour that we participated in was conducted by the Dekalb History Center, and it gave me a fresh perspective on how to celebrate the history of a community. We explored the floor plans, house types, and architectural styles of some of Decatur's historic gems and hidden treasures. The buildings ranged from private residences to public buildings, from mansions to one-room cabins, and from 1800s Victorian to modern Brutalist.

The tour began and ended with churches. First up was Decatur Presbyterian Church, a historic cornerstone of the city of Decatur that was established in 1825. Though the current building was constructed in the 1950s, it is listed as a "contributing property" in the Old Decatur Historic District because it helps tell the story.

The tour ended with the Romanesque structure that was once Decatur First United Methodist Church. The granite edifice, located at the corner of Sycamore Street and Commerce Avenue and known locally as the Stone Chapel, was begun in 1899 and expanded over the years. It is currently being converted to law offices since the congregation moved to a larger sanctuary a few blocks away in the 1960s.

After beginning the tour at Decatur Presbyterian Church, we moved half a block down Sycamore Street. As we stood in one spot and looked around, we learned about the Neoclassical design style of the Decatur Public library, the International 1960s style of the Decatur Recreation Center, and the Brutalist design of an office building across the street that was built in the 1970s.

Brutalist design is a term that originates from the French term for raw concrete, "beton brut." We saw a Queen Anne-style house, a four-square house with hints of the Prairie style, and an 1830s schoolhouse with teacher's residence.

I am not a student of Albany historic architecture, but I can well imagine someone developing a tour of the places, buildings, and people that make up its history. I had some fascinating discussions with the late City Commissioner Tommie Postell about his recollections of downtown Albany — specifically the two historic hotels.

The New Albany Hotel and the elegant Hotel Gordon were both built in the 1920s. If I remember correctly, Mr. Postell's father was an elevator operator in one (or both?) hotels and Mr. Postell recalled going back and forth between the hotels as a boy to see his dad. Both hotel buildings still stand, one as an apartment complex known as The Flats @ 249 and the other is being converted back into a hotel after being an office building for many years.

Downtown Albany has examples of Neoclassical, Victorian, and plenty of Brutalist designs. It has the rich history of the Harlem District, the weird history of a public library that inhabits a converted, four-story car dealership, and the inspiring story of the Horace King bridge house.

At one point in our Decatur history tour we stood outside someone's tiny home — probably a servant's quarters — that dated from the 1800s. It wasn't much larger than a garden shed and was called a single-pen house, a style that originated as a one-room log cabin. A few blocks away we marveled at the ornate beauty of a historic mansion that my wife captioned in her social media post as "I want to live here."

Our guide paused to talk about a road that pushed through town in the 1960s and forced the demolition of some houses. But we did not dwell on what was lost. Instead we learned about a 1960s gas station that had been constructed and later abandoned along that road. It was recently turned into a pizza parlor in a phenomenon called adaptive re-use. I got the impression that there was plenty of beauty, interest, and history to enjoy without being oversentimental about what once was.

History is important to cherish, but not when it stands in the way of significant improvements to the present. Historian Henry Glassie says, history is not the past but a map of the past, drawn from a particular point of view, to be useful to the modern traveler.