The Candler Hotel Atlanta, Curio Collection by Hilton

Atlanta's first skyscraper, built in 1906 for Coca-Cola founder Asa Candler, spent over a hundred years as an office building before a restoration turned it into a 265-room hotel in October 2019. The Beaux-Arts marble staircase and Tiffany windows survive intact under the Curio Collection by Hilton flag, on Peachtree Street in the heart of Downtown Atlanta.

The place

127 Peachtree Street NE, at the corner of Peachtree and the Five Points district in Downtown Atlanta — the historic core of the city, a few blocks from the Georgia State Capitol, Underground Atlanta and the MARTA Five Points hub. It's an office and government district more than a leisure one, which makes a hotel of this scale and ambition an anchor rather than one option among many.

The concept

The building is the Candler Building, commissioned in 1905 by Coca-Cola founder Asa Griggs Candler and completed in 1906 to designs by architects George E. Murphy and George Stewart. At 17 stories, it was Atlanta's first steel-framed skyscraper and the city's tallest building for years, clad in Georgia marble quarried in Tate and detailed in Beaux-Arts and Art Deco style — ornate even by the standards of its era. It functioned purely as offices, housing Coca-Cola's own operations among others, for more than a century before ever taking a single overnight guest. Developer REM Associates and Memphis-based Development Services Group led an $85 million restoration and adaptive-reuse conversion, funded in part by federal and state historic tax credits, that opened the building as a hotel for the first time in October 2019. The design-build team (The Beck Group) and interior designer NICOLEHOLLIS kept the marble grand staircase, two Tiffany glass windows and crystal chandeliers in place while inserting guest rooms with brass, oak parquet floors and custom furnishings — positioning the hotel toward travelers who want a landmark address in Downtown Atlanta with the polish of a boutique property rather than a big-box convention hotel.

Dining & wellness

By George, the hotel's restaurant and bar — named for the building's two original architects, George Murphy and George Stewart — occupies the ground floor with a full dining room and bar area serving contemporary American food and cocktails across breakfast, lunch, brunch and dinner. The hotel also has a 24-hour fitness center with Peloton bikes and roughly 6,000 square feet of event space, including a ballroom; it does not have a rooftop bar, pool or spa.