Downtown Macon

This post actually dates back to our first assignment about downtowns, CBDs, and zones of discard. I have had these pictures for a while, but had forgotten where I had stored them until the other day...so I apologize for the discontinuity. This is a view of downtown Macon taken from the top of an old sewing factory. Macon is the states fifth or sixth largest city and I am struck by the general lack of tall buildings which define the CBD. In Macon, there is no true CBD as we think of it. Indeed, the downtown's tallest buildings are scattered over several blocks and none of them are located on the busiest downtown streets. For a city of 100,000 people, Macon has a rather compact city core, but few of the buildings reach much higher than four stories, and indeed, most that do are old "hotel" apartment buildings.

This is another view of downtown Macon taken from atop Coleman Hill. Here, the proximity between the downtown area and the industrial district is quite evident. The tan building is the Hotel Dempsey, and just to its right is a grouping of silos which are part of cement mixing plant which is less than three blocks away from the downtown area. The plant largely marks the beginning of the zone of discard, which includes the building from where the previous picture of downtown was taken. This last picture is also taken from Coleman Hill. The juxtaposition of buildings here is quite unique. In the foreground, barely visible is the episcopal church (the gray building partially obscured by the trees in the lower left). To its right, is the Grand Opera House. Oddly, the Grand has a false front which was added when the building was renovated...a fact which is clearly evident due to the change in brick color. The rehabbing altered the facade to a state which likely never existed. Behind that is the dome of the Bibb County Courthouse, and then the Fickling Building. This grouping shows the importance of tall buildings to the city. Here one of the oldest standing churches is dwarfed by an eight or nine story building which rivals the height of the city's legal hub, which is, itself, dwarfed by a modern tower devoted to commerce. It shows that tall buildings in Macon have a rather recent history with the oldest tall buildings being churches, then societal and governmental sites. It is only recently that the tall building returned to the city, but this time money-making ventures, and not landmark cultural sites.