Editor’s Note: This article originally came from Online Athens.
https://www.onlineathens.com/story/news/state/2012/04/26/georgia-theatre-fraternity-win-preservation-awards/15612501007/
By: Blake Aued
Two downtown Athens buildings recently won awards for rehabilitation and stewardship from the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation.
The Georgia Theatre won one of 13 excellence in rehabilitation awards the nonprofit handed out for “compatible use of a building through repair, alterations or additions while preserving features of the property that convey its historic value.”
The 123-year-old concert venue, once a YMCA and a movie theater, reopened in August after a fire gutted it in 2009. Owner Wilmot Greene reconstructed the building’s interior and added a new roof while leaving the exterior shell intact.
Greene said he tried to preserve the theater’s spirit as well as the bricks and mortar.
“As different as it is physically, it still serves the same purpose as it did in 1889, which is a place for people to gather,” he said.
The Georgia Trust helped finance the project by collecting $300,000 in donations.
“It’s a huge honor,” Greene said. “It’s a big deal. I’m super thankful. The Georgia Trust was a big part of helping us pull this off.”
Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity won for its care of its house on Pulaski Street. The house, built for Col. Ross Crane in 1842, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
SAE, which has owned the house since 1935, renovated it several times. In 2008, alumni and parents who were concerned with the house’s condition undertook a $3 million renovation, repairing windows, redoing the kitchen, fixing walls and the heating and cooling system, mitigating water damage and painting the exterior.
“It’s something we’re very proud of,” said Mark Williams, president of the fraternity arm that owns the house. “We didn’t just do it, we did it right.”
The Georgia Trust had never given an award to a fraternity before, and it’s rare for a fraternity house to be in such good shape, communications director Traci Clark said.
The fraternity moved some of its parties to an outbuilding to help preserve the main house, Williams said.
“I think we’ve got some high-caliber kids who appreciate what they’ve got,” he said.
