When Lois Pattillo Bannister purchased the Donaldson home located at Chamblee Dunwoody Road and Vermack Road in 1935 and decided to renovate, she chose architect Francis Palmer Smith. That decision connects the Donaldson-Bannister home to not only Francis Palmer Smith, but several other notable Atlanta architects.
This is how the home today known as Donaldson-Bannister Farm looked following the remodel and addition commissioned by Lois Pattillo. She hired architect Francis Palmer Smith to design the changes.
Francis Palmer Smith studied architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, graduating in 1907. Georgia Tech began its architecture program in 1908 and the next year brought Smith in as professor and as director of the department. Smith taught the Beaux Arts style of architecture, a theatrical and classical style.
Aside from his own work, Smith taught some of the most well-known architects of the South in the early twentieth century, including Phillip Shutze, Preston Stevens, Flippen Burge, Ed Ivey and Lewis Crook, Jr. Philip Shutze’s work includes the Swan House and Glenn Memorial Church, Burge and Stevens designed the Capital City Country Club in Brookhaven, Ivey and Crooke designed Lullwater House at Emory University and First Baptist Church of Decatur. These are just examples of each of their portfolios.
During the time Francis Palmer Smith was director of the Architecture Department, Georgia Tech was growing and he was commissioned to design buildings for the campus. His buildings include what is known today as The Chapin Building and The J. S. Coon Building. Smith was head of the architecture department at Georgia Tech until 1922, when he went into private practice with Robert Smith Pringle.
Pringle and Smith built homes in Druid Hills and Buckhead. They also designed Coca-Cola Bottling plants, the Cox Carlton Hotel (now the Indigo Hotel in Midtown), and the Rhodes Haverty Building. In 1962, towards the end of his career, Smith designed the Cathedral of St. Philip on Peachtree Road.
Lois Pattillo Bannister, was a widow going by her maiden name when she bought the home and twenty five acres of Donaldson property. Her father, Samuel Jackson Pattillo, owned the Pattillo Lumber Company, with a sales office in the Healey Building in downtown Atlanta. He also owned a construction company. Francis Palmer Smith had designed a home for Samuel Jackson Pattillo at 137 Elizabeth Street in Inman Park. This was Lois Pattillo Bannister’s childhood home.
This is the childhood home of Lois Pattillo at 137 Elizabeth Street in Inman Park, as it looks today.
Lois Pattillo Bannister and Francis Palmer Smith, converted the original 1870 farm house from Plantation Plain to Colonial Revival style. When the home was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2009 the name assigned was Donaldson-Bannister Home and Cemetery.
Sources cited include: Francis P. Smith and Henry H. Smith Visual Materials file of Georgia Institute of Technology, Donaldson-Bannister Farm application by Lynne Byrd for the National Register of Historic Places, www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/arts-culture/francis-palmer-smith-1886-1971