by John Shearer
posted September 14, 2008
) Tower between Race and Hooper halls at UTC. Click to enlarge. |
It had a handsome and visually clean appearance sitting on the bluff of the Tennessee River, and I just assumed at my young age that it had been there since time began.
Within the old clubhouse's Green Room dining room hung several old photographs, one of which caught my eye. It was of the nearby Lyndhurst mansion built by Coca-Cola bottler J.T. Lupton about 1910.
I had just learned about the large home, which was torn down about 1960, and this photograph helped visualize for me how imposing the structure was. Hardly a week passed during those summers when I did not stop and examine that picture, or drive by the former homesite and try to figure out its footprints.
I had also long been in love with the old buildings around Lupton Circle at Baylor School, my alma mater. Even while gazing at the Tennessee River and the mountains as a young student, I understood that the setting beautifully combined the natural and man-made environment.
As a result of all these experiences, I was quite surprised to discover a few years later when I began working at the Chattanooga News-Free Press that all those buildings had been designed by one man -- an Atlanta architect named W.T. Downing.
He also designed the Ashland Farm mansion for Z.C. Patten in Chattanooga Valley, which may have been his first local project.
His other structures include the Hotel Patten/Patten Towers, which turned 100 years old this year, and Patten Chapel and the surrounding older UTC buildings alongside McCallie Avenue,
The former John A. Patten home at the top of Minnekahda Road in Riverview, which was converted into condominiums decades ago, is another Downing structure, as was the now-razed Elizabeth Apartments/Professional Building near McCallie Avenue and Georgia Avenue.
When I began researching some information on Walter Thomas Downing for a newspaper story about 20 years ago, I was interested to learn that he had been born in
Boston, but moved to Atlanta at a young age after his seafaring captain father died.
With little formal education, he later began working as an apprentice for the Atlanta firm of L.B. Wheeler and Will. Parkins.
His talent must have quickly become apparent, because he soon began designing homes for some of Atlanta's most prominent residents.
I was never able to uncover how he began designing homes for some of Chattanooga's prominent citizens, but perhaps one of the Pattens or Luptons was familiar with him or his work.
Longtime UTC art and architecture professor Dr. Gavin Townsend told me at that time that he thought Downing's work was more progressive than that of the well-known Chattanooga architect R.H.Hunt, who designed the County Courthouse, City Hall and Memorial Auditorium.
A few years ago, an Atlanta architect named Henry Howard Smith also told me that he thought Downing was trying to invent his own style. Mr. Smith's father and another man had designed such stately Riverview residences as the home resided in now by U.S. Sen. Bob Corker and the former Cartter Lupton home, now owned by the Kurt Schmissrauter family.
I gave Mr. Smith a tour of some of these Chattanooga places about that time, and I remember that when he saw the old Baylor gymnasium, now a drama facility, he knew immediately that it was a Downing building.
I also was able to get in touch with Mr. Downing's daughter, Nancy, who lived in Atlanta. She was elderly then, but I had a great time hearing her recall her late father, whom she called "Papa."
She said he was an accomplished piano player and, like some who are artistically bent, had a little bit of a temperamental streak. She jokingly recalled that her father once realized a contractor had put in a cheaper door than he had specified, so he kicked it down.
Born with poor eyesight, he died tragically in 1918 when he was struck by a truck while trying to cross a street in Philadelphia.
He died while only in his early 50s, but many of his buildings have added an aesthetically pleasing touch to various parts of the Chattanooga skyline for much longer.
jcshearer2@comcast.net
) Baylor School buildings. Click to enlarge. |
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