Welcome Takes Shape
How upcoming renovations reflect the church’s mission
In the late 1840s, when the railroad town of Marthasville had recently been renamed Atlanta and the Civil War was still years away, the town’s first religious congregations started to form. Among them, a group of nineteen Presbyterians banded together on January 8, 1848, and founded the Presbyterian Church of Atlanta. They were the church.
But people need spaces to gather for worship and to pass on the faith, whether under revival tents or in grand cathedrals. In 1852, the Presbyterians constructed their first building on Marietta Street in downtown Atlanta and replaced it on the same site in 1879. When the congregation moved out to the far reaches of Peachtree Street, their first structure was a Sunday school building completed in 1915. The late Gothic Revival sanctuary building followed, completed four years later. Worship and education were the core values upon which the physical church was built. As the neighborhood around the church filled with families, other buildings were constructed to meet the needs of the growing parish—a chapel, a fellowship hall, more classrooms.
By 1999, eighty-five years after acquiring the new lot, the once-quiet residential area around Sixteenth and Peachtree Streets had become the bustling arts hub of Midtown. The once-rustic railroad town of Atlanta had burgeoned into a major metropolitan area, with its share of poverty, hunger, and homelessness. To address the needs of its congregation and the community, First Presbyterian added the Christian Community Center, also called the Smith Building. It was designed with special attention to the services it would provide—a women’s shelter, food pantry, and a space for ministry partners, including the Samaritan Counseling Center and Childspring International.
Committee chair John McColl says the project began with a discussion of church values as opposed to money. The planning committee’s job was to translate the church’s values into a practical plan for renovation.
Throughout the church’s century-plus in its current location, renovations and repairs have kept the historic buildings maintained and up-to-date. Now, with eyes on the future, another major phase in the architectural history of the church is in the works.
Formative Values
Pioneer American architect Louis Sullivan coined a phrase at the end of the nineteenth century: “Form follows function.” The principle holds that the use of a building should determine its design. It could be said that First Presbyterian’s new $40 million renovation and expansion is based on the concept that form follows values.
The campus reconfiguration grew out of an initiative by senior pastor Rev. Dr. Tony Sundermeier, who came to the church in 2014. With the church’s 175th anniversary right around the corner, he discerned it was time to bring a small group of members together to form a strategic planning team. The team began its work in early 2016 and by year’s end presented the church’s Long-Range Strategic Plan, which identified seven specific goals detailing members’ commitment to each other and the city.
7 Goals of the FPC Long-Range Strategic Plan
Deepen Participation
Prioritize engagement in the life of the church in order to strengthen our community and be transformed in our faith.
Relational Priorities
Engage the congregation in fulfilling our relational priorities and ensure that all ministries promote human dignity, personal empowerment, restorative relationship, and just generosity.
Compassionate Care
Provide regular visits and spiritual friendship with all members and friends who are ill, bereaved, elderly, homebound or in need of care.
Servant Leadership
Equip members and friends to be servant leaders in the church and in all spheres of their lives.
Purposeful Engagement
Elevate the capacity of the church to be a dynamic center and resource for learning, building relationships, and spiritual growth.
Forward Thinking
Reshape our structure, operations and communications to prepare the congregation for our third century of ministry.
Social Entrepreneuership
Promote individual economic empowerment.
With the goals set and approved by the session, seven teams were formed to discern strategies for accomplishing these goals. One of those seven teams was called the “campus master planning team,” and member John McColl became the committee chair.
“I was only interested in helping if we were trying to do something generationally transformative,” said McColl, executive vice president of the Atlanta-based real estate company Cousins Properties. “I think that’s what we’re doing. We determined that we weren’t going to have conversations that started with money. We were going to have conversations that started with vision and grand ideas.”
“We took those values, of which radical hospitality was one, and asked the question ‘What can and should be done with our campus to facilitate the implementation of those values?’” said lawyer Jim Hasson, a committee member since the beginning. No one wanted to significantly alter the historic sanctuary and chapel, he said, “but what about the rest of the campus?”
“I was only interested in helping if we were trying to do something generationally transformative. I think that’s what we’re doing.”
John McColl
Looking first at the exterior along Peachtree Street, the committee determined that the impression was a bit like a fortress.
“It does not invite the community or nonmembers in,” Hasson said.
“We look like a big castle, all closed up,” said McColl.
Frontage along Sixteenth Street and facing Arts Center Way could also use improvement, they decided. A significant concern was how people seeking help from Community Ministries entered the Smith Building—by lining up outside at the corner of Sixteenth Street and Arts Center Way to be admitted into a fire escape stairwell. Although the help is offered with love and compassion, the process of coming into the church is “a terribly inhospitable, undignified manner of greeting those fellow human beings,” Hasson said. “We said that really needs to change.”
In the Heart of Midtown
The church’s desire to transform the facade on Peachtree Street coincides with the goals of the Midtown Alliance, a nonprofit coalition of leading business and community leaders in the area between downtown and Buckhead. In 1997, the alliance began formulating a framework to transform Midtown into a welcoming, environmentally responsible, pedestrian-friendly neighborhood. Glass entrances, plazas and parks, “front yards,” and improved accessibility to buildings were among the features outlined in the plan, which was updated in 2003.
The Midtown blueprint, as it is called, was intended “to enliven the street life of Midtown,” said Hank Houser of the Houser Walker architectural firm, principal architect for the First Presbyterian project. With that in mind, he said, “transparency” and “openness” in exterior walls and “creative development from the sidewalk to the building” will be important elements in the church’s new look. He describes the new front-facing Peachtree Street along Fifield Hall as a porch. “We southerners love front-porch sitting,” he said. “A porch is a place to meet people, a welcoming place, a place in between.”
Under the final master plan design, which remains subject to a successful fundraising campaign, people going past the church will be able to see inside through walls of glass that are a “counterpoint to the heavy stone of the church,” Houser said. “It’s an incredibly beautiful church, but it’s stone. It’s heavy. It’s opaque. People can’t see the vibrant life inside.” A level walkway will bring people into the building through handicap-accessible doors. Benches shaded by a canopy of trees will invite people to bring their lunch boxes and sit a spell.
“There’s a lot I’m excited about,” said Helen Hatch, a professional architect who has been on the planning committee since its early days. “By far one of the most exciting things to me is creating transparency between the exterior and interior, opening up the church to the community.”
Architects envisioned a front porch and walls of glass along Peachtree Street, left, to offset the church’s heavy stone exterior and redesigned the entrances along Sixteenth Street, right, to be more accessible and inviting.
Entrances from Sixteenth Street and Arts Center Way will also be made friendlier, more inviting, and more accessible.
“We think the MARTA station is going to bring considerable additional development between our property and the area running to the Downtown Connector,” Jim Hasson said. “It would be beneficial to have an attractive entrance on the Arts Center Way side of the building as well as the Peachtree side.”
Key to making the physical building more hospitable is changing the way people coming to Community Ministries for assistance will enter the building. Under the plan, they will no longer have to come through a separate door but will enter the same way members do.
“It’s important to treat anybody involved in Community Ministries so that they feel as welcome as the millionaire,” said Helen Hatch.
“We’re embracing a higher level of hospitality and respect,” said John McColl. “We’re trying to make the physical plant of our church match what we’ve said we’re focused on.”
Outside In and Inside Out
Once people are drawn into the building by the welcoming exterior, they will find easy-to-navigate hallways, comfortable seating areas, and flexible spaces that can accommodate a few people or hundreds. Perhaps the most dramatic change will be the creation of the Commons, a three-story-tall central gathering space encompassing the space now partially occupied by the Wirth Room, with an entry from the outside added. Think town square, Italian piazza, or campus green, said Houser. “These ideas are as old as cities.”
All halls will lead there. “It’s an opening where people will naturally wind up,” he said. When not used for major events, the Commons will be furnished with comfortable but durable sofas and chairs where people can hold informal meetings or just stop for a conversation. “It feels like a place to go and have a chat,” said McColl. “It will be large enough for an event and small enough that it won’t feel like a big empty space. That’s a tricky balance.”
Fifield Hall, the current fellowship room that doubles as the venue for the less formal 9:30 a.m. Sunday worship service, will be reoriented so that the permanent stage will be where the kitchen is now. The kitchen will be to the side of the hall in roughly the location of the current stage.
Once complete, the new Commons will provide a refreshing spot for workers and students in Midtown to come and discover the church.
Small seating areas will be located throughout the first floor of the church, and a coffee bar is planned for a space near the Sixteenth Street entrance. Details are incomplete, but committee members express hope that it will serve not only as a refreshing spot for church members and visitors but also draw workers and students from Midtown, and perhaps patrons of the High Museum next door.
Most offices will move to a consolidated area on the third floor. Music will remain near the practice rooms, and Community Ministries staff will stay close to where clients are served. A new food pantry will function more like a grocery store, where people can choose what they need and want instead of being handed prepacked bags. Small private rooms will provide privacy for counseling and assistance. The showers, barbershop, and clients’ mail room will all move to the first floor of the Smith Building, where the library and bookstore have been. The Women’s Transformation Center, a long-term shelter, will be reconfigured with private rooms.
“Our Community Ministries staff and volunteers are doing great work,” said McColl.
“We want to give them the setting to do it better and to treat their clients like anybody else would want to be treated.”
Several spaces will also be renovated for Children’s and Youth Ministries, including a brand-new recreation room on the first floor.
Interior furnishings, paint, flooring, and furniture will be neither institutional nor residential in their feel. The decor “will be current and timeless at the same time,” said Ann Dupre, an interior designer and new member of the committee. “We want to incorporate some of the elements of the historic architecture by repeating a motif or material so that there is a reference to the past but looking to the future. What we want to convey is a sense of hospitality and welcome in every direction.”
From its founding in downtown Atlanta almost 175 years ago, generations of congregants at First Presbyterian Church have strived to live up to the teachings of Jesus to love God and neighbor, whoever that may be. The campus master plan is all about showing that love by extending radical hospitality so that all who enter can feel a sense of belonging.
