Background and construction During the latter half of the 19th century, the land in
downtown Atlanta that the hotel would be built on was primarily residential. In the 1850s,
William Ezzard, who would later serve multiple terms as
mayor of Atlanta, had a two-story brick house built on that
city block and lived there until selling the property in 1880. On August 3, 1901, the Piedmont Hotel Company spent $125,000 in purchasing the city block from the multiple owners who owned the individual
land lots, which included politician
M. Hoke Smith. At this time, the area was still residential, though there were two other hotels that had been built in the area: the
Hotel Aragon in 1892 and the
Majestic Hotel in 1898. Atlanta's main center for development had been located south of this area, at
Five Points, although by the early 20th century, this area had grown congested and new developments began to spread northwards along
Peachtree Street. Hotel construction followed this trend, as new hotels built in the early 1900s such as the
Georgian Terrace Hotel and the
Biltmore Hotel were located further from the city's
Union Station than hotels that had been built in the 1800s. Construction on the Piedmont Hotel commenced in mid-1901. The building was designed by
Willis F. Denny, an Atlanta-based architect who designed several other notable buildings in the city, such as
St. Mark United Methodist Church and
Rhodes Hall. Construction on the hotel lasted through 1902, and it opened to the public at noon on January 15, 1903. The opening was a big event for the city, as thousands of people gathered to see the hotel's interior and prompting the
Atlanta chief of police to dispatch officers to keep order. That afternoon,
The Atlanta Journal published a front page story on the opening, calling the hotel "the handsomest and most complete in
the South". While other hotels in the city, such as the
Kimball House, had a reputation as institutions that maintained Southern customs, such as in the
Southern cuisine offered in their eateries, the Piedmont instead sought to emulate the style of the hotels in the northeastern United States. One way in which the Piedmont differed from other local hotels was that their staff of
bellhops and
chambermaids consisted entirely of
white Americans, unlike in other hotels which often employed African Americans in those positions. According to historian
Franklin Garrett, the hotel was often referred to by locals as "our New York City hotel". In 1906, Atlanta's first storefront theater, a
nickelodeon called the Peachtree Theatorium, opened in the hotel's lobby. The following year, a
guide book called the Piedmont the largest hotel in the city.
Popularity and renovation In its early years, the hotel was host to numerous notable guests. Until the Georgian Terrace was completed in 1912, the Piedmont was the hotel of choice for visiting opera stars. During one week in March 1911, the hotel hosted former United States President
Theodore Roosevelt, current President
William Howard Taft, and future president and then-
Governor of New Jersey Woodrow Wilson, who were in Atlanta for the Southern Commercial Congress. In the 1920s,
Margaret Mitchell interviewed inventor
Hudson Maxim at his room at the Piedmont for a story published by
The Atlanta Journal. Other notable individuals who stayed at the hotel include United States Vice President
Thomas R. Marshall, politician
William Jennings Bryan,
United States Army General
Leonard Wood, business magnate
J. Ogden Armour, racing driver
Barney Oldfield, and writer
Thomas Dixon Jr. In 1921, representatives from 14 universities in the southern United States met at the hotel to establish the
Southern Conference. Going into that decade, the property had a
tax assessment of $977,500, and it boasted 400 rooms, of which 250 had private baths. However, by the middle of the decade, the Piedmont saw a decline in popularity, and between 1928 and 1929, the hotel was closed for a massive
renovation. This was carried out by the Atlanta-based
architectural firm of
Pringle & Smith and commenced on January 1, 1929. As part of the project, almost the entire building except for the
structural frame was stripped and rebuilt. As a result of the renovation, much of the building's ground floor
frontage was converted to commercial use, with several shops added to the building's lobby. The total cost for the renovation was $750,000. In 1932, Georgia politician
Charles R. Crisp based his headquarters at the hotel during his unsuccessful bid in the
that year's Senate elections.
Closing and demolition was constructed on the site of the hotel. On March 2, 1965, the
stockholders of the Piedmont Hotel Company announced that they had accepted a $3.5 million offer from the
Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States to purchase the property, where they intended to construct a new office building. This was part of a larger trend of insurance companies building offices in Atlanta, as between 1960 and 1965, several major insurance firms had either constructed or had plans to construct a collective 135 floors-worth of office space in the city. The hotel closed without fanfare at noon on May 3, 1965. The following day,
The Atlanta Constitution published an editorial about the hotel, commending it for its high quality and saying in part about its demolition, "It is with regret that we see an old friend, the Piedmont, depart". The building was demolished that year, and by 1968, the
Equitable Building, a 34-floor skyscraper that had cost $20 million to erect, was completed. == Design ==