The Southern Bell Telephone Company Building, now known as the AT&T Communications Building, is the main telephone exchange for downtown Atlanta. It is located at 51 Peachtree Center Avenue, on the northeast corner of Auburn Avenue.
It was designed for Southern Bell by Marye, Alger and Vinour, in an austere art deco style. Originally planned to be 25 stories in height, which would have made it the tallest building in Atlanta, it was completed in 1929 at six stories. Additions in 1947, 1948 and 1963 brought it to its present 14 stories.
The building is crowned by an incongruous microwave communications tower.
Famous quotes containing the words southern, bell, telephone, company and/or building:
“... as a result of generations of betrayal, it’s nearly impossible for Southern Negroes to trust a Southern white. No matter what he does or what he suffers, a white liberal is never established beyond suspicion in the hearts of the minority.”
—Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 2, ch. 10 (1962)
“I was thinking of a son.
The womb is not a clock
nor a bell tolling,
but in the eleventh month of its life
I feel the November
of the body as well as of the calendar.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“It’s a hard feeling when everyone’s in a hurry to talk to somebody else, but not to talk to you. Sometimes you get a feeling of need to talk to somebody. Somebody who wants to listen to you other than “Why didn’t you get me the right number?””
—Heather Lamb, U.S. telephone operator. As quoted in Working, book 2, by Studs Terkel (1973)
“We do not mind our not arriving anywhere nearly so much as our not having any company on the way.”
—Frank Moore Colby (1865–1925)
“Notice how he has numbered the blue veins
in my breast. Moreover there are ten freckles.
Now he goes left. Now he goes right.
He is building a city, a city of flesh.
He’s an industrialist.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)