With the recent opening of the City Hall time capsule after approximately 100 years, noted architect R.H. Hunt’s name has reappeared.

But many of his buildings have never disappeared.

Even though he died in 1937, Mr. Hunt’s buildings still dominate the Chattanooga landscape almost like Lookout or Signal Mountain.

One is City Hall, and that is why a promotional sheet advertising some of his buildings was among the items pulled out of the time capsule on Feb. 7.

Other local structures he designed are the Hamilton County Courthouse, the James Building, the Maclellan Building, Chattanooga School for the Arts and Sciences, Second Presbyterian Church, the Chattanooga Bank Building, the Millers Building the Carnegie Library, the covered-up First Tennessee (Hamilton National) Bank building, the Medical Arts Building, and the Federal Building, among many others.

The old First Baptist Church and YMCA on Georgia Avenue and the Pound/News Building on 11th Street are among his more prominent structures no longer standing.

His buildings still dot the skylines of other cities as well. According to some information given to the Bicentennial Library several years ago by Franklin Associates Architects, which has a number of his plans in its archives, he designed at least 400-500 structures around the South.

He also did work in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Virginia, Washington, and West Virginia. He even designed a Baptist school in China.

Most of his work seems to be churches, some of which he reportedly designed for free. He also did schools, government buildings and other structures out of town.

Among the more interesting ones found on the list include the Huntsville Daily Times building in Alabama, some buildings at Mississippi State University in Starkville and at other colleges, the Bradley County Courthouse in Cleveland, the Polk County Courthouse in Benton, and the Coca-Cola Bottling Co. in Danville, Va.,

Although he primarily did larger structures, he also designed a few residences. The list says that he did homes in Chattanooga for such residents as Thomas Myers, J.C. Henderson, G.E. Henson, son-in-law T.G. Street and Mr. and Mrs. G.W. Bagwell.

The list must not be totally complete, because he also designed the courthouse in his native Elbert County in Northeast Georgia, and it is not listed.

UTC art and architecture professor Dr. Gavin Townsend, who has studied R.H. Hunt in detail, believes that he had one of the largest architectural firms in the Southeast.

“He involved his family in the enterprise, hired scores of draftsmen, and accumulated projects in just about every state from Virginia to Florida and North Carolina to Texas,” said Dr. Townsend. “He had a reputation as a reliable, competent, religious man, and this won him many commissions, especially for churches.”

Evidently, he was as skilled with his mouth as he was with his drawing hand. “He was a very accomplished salesman,” said longtime Chattanooga architect Ted Franklin of Franklin Associates Architects.

Dr. Townsend added that to help Mr. Hunt win church commissions, he authored a three-volume folio of small church designs.

He also had a reputation for constructing solid, fireproof buildings, and this helped him gain commissions for major public buildings like the Hamilton County Courthouse, Dr. Townsend added.

“By the 1910s, R. H. Hunt and Company had become something of an architectural machine, cranking out one building after the next,” he said. “Yet to my knowledge, no two buildings were exactly alike.”

While Mr. Hunt was known for quantity, he also had a reputation for quality.

“He was no great architectural innovator in the manner of a Frank Lloyd Wright,” said Dr. Townsend. “He did not develop a trademark style, preferring instead to follow the prevailing architectural styles of his day. Neither did he publish much, so it's little wonder not much has been written about him.

“But he was still a prolific, competent designer whose works dot the South,” he continued. “And he's certainly worth some serious attention.”

Reuben Harrison Hunt was born on Groundhog Day 1862, the son of a merchant, planter and Civil War veteran. He moved to Chattanooga in 1882 to work as a builder and carpenter with the Adams Brothers architectural firm.

He later studied architecture and opened his own firm in the 1880s. Before he was 30 years old, he received the commission to design Chattanooga’s First Baptist Church, where he was a member.

Throughout his lengthy career, he adapted to all the different styles that came into vogue. One of his later projects was the art deco Federal Building.

In 1938, the Federal Building was named by the American Institute of Architects as one of the 150 best-designed buildings in the United States since World War I.

Architects W.C. Caton and Rufus Holt were associated with the R.H. Hunt Co. in later years, and the Franklin firm later employed both of them, Mr. Franklin said.

Mr. Caton had been the drafting room boss for Mr. Hunt, and Mr. Franklin later hired him at age 78 as a production draftsman. Mr. Franklin said that Mr. Caton’s wife later told him that Mr. Caton’s years simply designing structures for Mr. Franklin’s firm were the happiest years of his life.

Mr. Caton also left an important mark with the Franklin firm in the form of many of Mr. Hunt’s old drawings, which he sold to Mr. Franklin a number of years ago.

Mr. Franklin said the main reason his firm wanted them was to help it while doing restoration work on Hunt’s buildings. Just this week, the Franklin firm was using Hunt’s plans for its work on the Medical Arts Building, which is now part of First Presbyterian Church.

His firm also gets contacted from people out of town interested in learning more about Mr. Hunt’s buildings. For example, Mr. Franklin said they recently heard from some people at a Mississippi library.

Although the old Hunt drawings have utilitarian value today, they are also appreciated for their artistic quality.

With Mr. Hunt’s Indian ink drawings of pretty buildings on old-fashioned sized linen clothes, the form of them is as good as the function.

John Shearer
jcshearer2@comcast.net