Kimball House (Atlanta)

The Kimball House was the name of two historical hotels in Atlanta, Georgia. Both were constructed on an entire city block at the south-southeast corner of Five Points, bounded by Whitehall Street (now part of Peachtree Street), Decatur Street, Pryor Street, and Wall Street, a block now occupied by a multi-story parking garage.

In 1870 on a recommendation of building contractor John C. Peck, Hanniball Kimball purchased a lot near the Union Depot where the Atlanta Hotel had been before being burned in 1864 during the American Civil War. He gathered the financing for the endeavor through a confusing (and later a scandalous) combination of bonds, mortgages and subscriptions. The original estimate for the hotel was $250,000, though it eventually cost $650,000, 1/15th the total assessed value of Atlanta real estate at the time. The unusual funding scheme resulted in Kimball filing for bankruptcy and losing control of the building by the next year.

Kimball hired William Parkins as the architect while Peck served as the construction manager for the project.^, Construction began immediately on March 28, 1870, the day after Kimball received his lease from King. The lot, primarily owned by Joseph Thompson, was located on Pryor Street between Decatur and Wall. Thompson sold his portion of the land to Kimball through his real estate agent George W. Adair. The rest of the land was leased to Kimball by Richard Peters and John P. King.

Kimball began construction, promising to have the hotel complete by October 1870. True to his word, Kimball hosted a dinner to celebrate the opening of the hotel on October 17 that year, although the structure was only two-thirds complete, and parts of the interior work would take the better part of a decade to be finished.

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