From 1903 to 1906, my 2x great-granduncle Daniel Scott (younger brother of my 3x great-grandmother Scoatney (Scott) Cooper), appears in Atlanta city directories as a waiter at a place called The Farlinger, or the Farlinger Café. Just a few years later, Daniel’s brother James Solomon Scott also turns up at the Farlinger, appearing as a janitor in city directories for 1909, 1912, 1913, and 1915. The 1910 U.S. Census shows him living at the Farlinger and working as a building janitor. So, what is this place and what can we find out about it?
Groundbreaking Atlanta Apartment Building
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| The Atlanta Constitution, 25 June 1898, p. 4. Found on Newspapers.com |
Opened in 1898, the Farlinger was an apartment building seated atop a grocery store with a café perched on top. It was a mixed use building like many we’d find in our cities and communities across the nation today. Its owner was a man named Alexander W. Farlinger, a Canadian transplant born in 1861 who moved to Atlanta a little over a decade after the Civil War.
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| Southern Merchant, vol. 17-18 (1906), Internet Archive, https://hdl.handle.net/2027/nyp.33433020512640 |
Farlinger was a grocer by trade and both ads and other references to his store can be found frequently in the Atlanta Constitution in the 1880s and beyond. He even served as President of the National Retail Grocers Association.
When A.W. Farlinger built his grocery, apartment building, and café, the lot was in the northernmost residential neighborhood of the city. And his building was one of the first apartment buildings in the city, at least according to an application for it to be added to the National Register of Historic Sites. Decorated in the “High Victorian” style, it would have been a stately sight in the neighborhood. In fact, it was featured on a couple of postcards over the years. Here’s one:
It was a four-story triangular building, set on a wedge-shaped lot at the intersection of Peachtree and Ivy Streets. Here’s a fire insurance map showing its location in 1911.
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| Both images from the Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Atlanta, Fulton County, Georgia. Sanborn Map Company, ; Vol.4, 1911. Map. https://www.loc.gov/item/sanborn01378_009/. |
And here’s a description of the space when it first opened, just a few years before Daniel started working there:
The entire appearance of the building is very pleasing, and it is most pretty to look at. Spacious bay windows are in the building, and add greatly to the general appearance of beauty.
The flats are beautifully furnished with Brussels carpets, lace curtains, frescoed ceilings and wainscoting of marble. A bathroom is attached to every flat, and if there is anything lacking in either the furnishings or makeupv of the entire flat, it would be hard to find.
Elevators of the very latest patent carry passengers to each floor. An airy, elegantly furnished restaurant is on the top floor, where excellent meals are served at a nominal price. This restaurant is destined to become very popular with the fashionable set on Peachtree street…
That’s from a June 1898 article from the Atlanta Constitution reporting on the building’s opening – the same that the headline further up the page came from. While a lot can certainly change in a short amount of time, I haven’t seen any evidence that things had significantly declined in the years that the Scott brothers worked there.
The Residents
I love using city directories to see who lived and worked with my ancestors in big cities. Here’s a quick snapshot of the residents in 1914 (or perhaps 1913, depending on when the information was gathered), when James Solomon Scott was working there:
- At least 6 nurses: Miss Maude Crowe, Miss Celia Johnson, Mrs. Carrie Mason, Miss Viola Miller, Mrs. M.C. O’Connell, and Miss Alma Reagan
- A traveling salesman, W.R. Bell
- An engraver, Philip A. Glasgow
- Miss Ruby M. England, a clerk for the Western Union Telephone Company
- Mrs. S.E. Goss, a stenographer for Bell Telephone
- James F. DeJarnette, chief clerk for the Ansley Hotel
- Three music teachers: Miss Eda E. Batholomew, of the Atlanta Institute of Music and Oratory, Miss Marguerite Bartholomew, of the same, and Miss Claudia Bass (no affiliation listed), and
- Feris V. Taylor, an organ builder
One wonders if Feris and the music teachers got along well. And did James Solomon Scott hear more good music as he did his janitorial work, or more of the “still learning” type?
Daniel would have heard music, too. In 1902, Miss Mary Ward was selling her services as a music teacher.
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| A resident's ad from the Atlanta Georgian and News - 21 Sept. 1911, p8. Found on Georgia's Historic Newspapers: https://gahistoricnewspapers.galileo.usg.edu/ |
She wasn’t the only female entrepreneur Daniel would have seen in the building. Also in 1902, Dr. Elizabeth Ewing operated her osteopathic medicine practice part-time out of the Farlinger, when she wasn’t in Marietta.
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| Resident Dr. Elizabeth Ewing's ad, from the Marietta Journal - 21 Jan 1902, p5. Found on Georgia's Historic Newspapers: https://gahistoricnewspapers.galileo.usg.edu/ |
Daniel likely also would have been familiar with Miss Ethel Cook, Mrs. Elizabeth Wood Cundell, Mrs. Elizabeth Winship Lovejoy Ginn, and Lillian Johnston Jacobs. All were members of the Daughters of the American Revolution, and, according to the DAR’s 194 national directory, all four lived at the Farlinger. Makes me wonder what conversations he was a part of, and what he overheard.
Their Colleagues
Of course, Daniel and James Solomon Scott weren’t the only
folks working at the Farlinger Apartment House and Café. In 1903, during Daniel’s
time, there were at least 3 other Black waiters in the café: Robert Davis, Samuel
Hamilton, and Frank Wilson. They worked under café manager, E. T.
Milligan. William Jackson was a Black janitor in the café, and Richard Wheeler
was a Black cook. Henry Burt and Ernest Goodwin, both Black, were both porters
for the Farlinger, and James Davis, also Black, was an “elevator man.”
Meanwhile, Wesley Bolden and William Gray, both Black, were drivers for either the
Farlinger or for Alexander Farlinger himself. Meanwhile, in the store on the
first floor, Candler Copeland served as a clerk, perhaps ringing up goods that
salesman Alexander McCleod has assisted his customers in finding. Meanwhile, in 1910, when James Solomon Scott is listed as both living and working at the Farlinger, so too are 4 maids and 4 bell boys (not boys at all, but grown men in their 20s and 30s.
What Happened Next?
Alexander W. Farlinger sold his apartment building in 1910 and it was soon renamed The Frances.
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| Article announcing the sale of the Farlinger, published in the Griffin (GA) Daily News and Sun - 4 Jan 1910, p1. Found on Georgia's Historic Newspapers: https://gahistoricnewspapers.galileo.usg.edu/ |
James Solomon Scott continued to work there as a janitor until about 1915. Sometime in the 1920s or ‘30s, the building was turned into a hotel. The neighborhood became increasingly commercial and folks looking for permanent housing moved further and further away from the area. Eventually, the hotel began serving a clientele of folks down on their luck, and lost its luster and prestige, as the neighborhood it sat in had. The building was then purchased by a developer hoping to renovate it for commercial purposes. In 1982, the building was added to the National Register of Historic Places, but just 6 years later, in 1988, it was demolished after a fire left the structure unsafe.
If you’re taking a walk in downtown Atlanta and want to see
what the site looks like today, go to the intersection of Peachtree and
Peachtree Center Avenue (the contemporary name for Ivy St.). Here’s what you’ll
see at the site of the Farlinger Apartment House, once the workplace, and for
James Solomon Scott, the home, of two of my 2x great granduncles.
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| There's a very small park and a very tall building where The Farlinger used to stand at 325 Peachtree Street. But look across the street - the church from the postcard is still there! |
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