Beautification Edition - 1736 Magazine, Summer 2019

I.M. Pei displays a large-scale model of lower Broad Street in 1974. Many of the designs would be implemented during the 1970s.
[FILE/THE AUGUSTA CHRONICLE]
Pei days
By DAMON CLINE
Noted architect captivated Augusta during the 1970s
There’s a saying in architectural
circles that today’s eyesore is
tomorrow’s gem.
Some could argue the
inverse applies to I.M. Pei’s designs
in downtown Augusta during the
1970s.
The internationally acclaimed
architect, who died earlier this year,
gave the city center some of its most
distinctive – and disdained – landmarks,
from the modernist penthouse
atop the historic Lamar Building to
the sunken parking bays along lower
Broad Street.
The Chinese-born architect who
rose to fame in America after World
War II brought his striking designs to
Augusta at a time civic leaders were
fighting to keep downtown from succumbing
to urban decay.
Pei’s nearly decade-long association
with the Garden City was largely
the result of one man: the late R.
Eugene Holley.
It started in 1973 when the influential
banker and state senator decided
to remodel his Lamar Building – then
known as the Southern Finance
Building.
“I remodel landmarks, save landmarks
and build next to landmarks,”
Holley told The Augusta Chronicle.
Flush with cash from oil investments,
Holley hired Pei’s New
York-based firm for the landmark
remodeling job.
Within a year, Pei was being
courted to design the city’s new civic
center, a project Holley influenced as
chairman of the Augusta-Richmond
County Coliseum Authority.
Community leaders were so
enamored by the John F. Kennedy
Memorial Library’s architect that
they hired him to take over a
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