Despite demolition threats and preservation disputes in recent years,
the beloved circa 1901 Excelsior Mill / Masquerade still stands on North
Avenue across the street from the old Sears building.
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| Top photo: January 1989 Bottom photo: January 2012 |
In January 1989 it was still known as the Excelsior Mill Restaurant
& Bar. They served really good pizza and had a small movie theater
there. In the late '80s it morphed into a night club with live music. ( The bands on the marquee are Mary My Hope, Rumble Circus, and the Shadow Puppets.) I took this photo after hearing rumors they might be closing.
Sure enough, they were soon out of business and within months reopened
as The Masquerade, a tri-level club showcasing punk, metal, and goth
bands. In 2004, the property was sold to a developer who soon announced his intention to demolish the old mill and replace it with just what we need... MORE CONDOS! After months of neighborhood protests and a campaign by the Atlanta Preservation Center to raise awareness of the historic value of the site, a deal was reached and the building was saved. The vantage point of these two photos is now a sidewalk in the new Historic Fourth Ward Park. The menacing gothic atmosphere has certainly been neutered by the surrounding sod, bike racks, and cutesy bushes.
The Masquerade complex was originally the Du Pree (or Dupre) Manufacturing Company and produced excelsior, wood shavings that were essentially the late 19th century equivalent of modern foam packing peanuts. I've never found an accurate construction date. Various articles in the AJC have mentioned 1905, 1892 and 1890 while the Atlanta Preservation Center pins the date circa 1901. The site appears vacant on the 1892 Birdseye View of Atlanta illustration but the complex is shown on this 1911 Sanborn Insurance map.
It's probably obvious to anyone who has read more than one of my posts that I find these nearly century old "Birdseye View Of Atlanta" maps endlessly fascinating. In this 1919 view, the mill can be seen at right. Following the railroad to the left from the mill, you'll find the Ford factory, the bridge over Ponce, and the Atlanta Crackers baseball park.
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I remember going to Excelsior Mill in the 1980's for Mellow Mushroom pizza. They also had an organ that would play and people would dance in the large room.
ReplyDeleteI've been to several ear shattering concerts inside and in the music park out back. Has a remarkable freight elevator. A band can put their entire kit on it for a lift from the parking lot to right beside the "Heaven" stage.
ReplyDeleteI saw the great film My Beautiful Laundrette at the Mill and had tasty pizza, probably in 1986. Great memories of the Excelsior Mill! It's great to see that this place hasn't been forgotten.
ReplyDeleteI loved Excelsior Mill and spent time there in the late 70's. It wasn't air conditioned then so it could really get hot in the summer but the pizza was great and the old musician performing then was supposedly a well-known blues musician.
ReplyDeletePiano Red was his name I think?
DeleteGreat in sequence! There is something wonderful about "Excelsior Mill / Masquerade". I am fearful by the excellence of information on this website.
ReplyDeleteI think, The first thing you need to determine is where the problem lies. Is it a problem in your home, your building, or is it a city water supply problem?
I am sure I will visit this place another time soon, to know about Atlanta Property Restoration.
Best spam ever! "I am fearful by the excellence of information on this website." Yeah!
DeleteI'm thankful for your blog post! There is very little information on this structure, and I am using it for an adaptive reuse project as my interior design senior capstone project. It's a shame there isn't more out there on it...
ReplyDeleteThank you for letting people know a littletter about the amazing history of this building. The Dupree family still live in Marietta. Bambi Ray, from Historical Society, talked with them for the historical review she did on the building. We used that report to negotiate Landmark Designation - local ordinace- to preserve the 2 granite buildings. A fun fact; there are only 12 Mills of this type still existing in the world today and this is the ONLY one with so much od it mechinary still in tact.
ReplyDeleteThank you for letting people know a littletter about the amazing history of this building. The Dupree family still live in Marietta. Bambi Ray, from Historical Society, talked with them for the historical review she did on the building. We used that report to negotiate Landmark Designation - local ordinace- to preserve the 2 granite buildings. A fun fact; there are only 12 Mills of this type still existing in the world today and this is the ONLY one with so much od it mechinary still in tact.
ReplyDeleteThank you Anna Foote for your efforts!
ReplyDeleteI use to party there from 198 and 87 when I was attending DeVry Institute of Technology in Decatur. Some of my best memories were in that place as house music and 80's hip hop played all night.
ReplyDeleteI remember eating delicious pizza there in the late 1980s. It was a dark, dimly lit inside, but noisy because of the high ceilings. There was another pizza place at Lenox called The Upper Crust that was great, too. I saw Porno For Pyros at The Masquerade in the late 1990s, shook hands with the guitarist before he got on the bus.
ReplyDeleteOne of the best show venues for punk, metal, and generally noisy rocknroll. Went to countless shows there thru highschool in the late 80s and into the 00's. I need to see a photo of the interior stairs. I have certain mental snapshots, but my aging memories beg to take me back to climbing that set of two stairs, standing on middle platform talking to friends bout show we just saw, smoking cigarettes in the area at top of stairs before going thru door into heaven, down two steps onto old, wavy floors. i could go on and on..but I CANT FIND PICS OF THIS before it looked new and cleaned up!! It was a massive, dungeon-y, haunted old building. Perfect for a kid who felt nervous and weird about stuff that was too polished.
ReplyDelete