Georgia Tech Institutional Drawings Collection

When the Georgia School of Technology first opened its doors in 1888, classes were held in two buildings located on nine acres of land in what is now midtown Atlanta. That first year, 129 students enrolled. Enrollment grew to more than 1000 by 1918, and nearly 6000 by the 1944-1945 school year. This type of growth prompted the continual need for more space and additional buildings. By 1960, approximately 65 buildings on 153 acres comprised the Georgia Tech campus which served about 6700 students. In 2008, the Atlanta campus encompassed 400 acres and approximately 150 buildings with a student enrollment of more than 18,000.

The mid-twentieth century was a period of extraordinary campus expansion and building construction. During this time, many of the new campus buildings and renovations of existing buildings were designed by architects who were also professors at Tech’s architecture school—Harold Bush-Brown, James “Doc” Gailey, and Paul Heffernan. Some of their more prominent projects included the Hinman Research Building; Smith, Glenn and Towers dormitories; the old West Stands of Grant Field; the School of Textile Engineering Hightower Building; the Architecture East Building; and the Price Gilbert Library.

James “Doc” Herbert Gailey (1887-1966), a native of Philadelphia, earned his architecture degree from University of Pennsylvania in 1910. He began teaching in Georgia Tech's architecture department in 1912 and by 1925 he was a full professor. With the exception of a thirteen month fellowship to study in Europe during 1923-24, Gailey spent his entire career teaching at Tech. He retired in 1955.

Harold Bush-Brown (1888-1983) was born in Paris to American parents but the family settled in Newburgh, New York. Bush-Brown attended Harvard, where he received an A.B. degree in 1911, and completed the Master of Architecture degree in 1915. In the fall of 1922, following positions in several architectural firms in the Northeast and a stint in the U.S. Navy, Bush-Brown accepted a teaching position in the Department of Architecture at Georgia Tech. In 1925 he became Head of the Department. He held this position until 1949, when the Department of Architecture became the School of Architecture. Bush-Brown served as the first Director of the School until his retirement in May 1956.

Paul Malcolm Heffernan (1909-1987), born in Iowa, attended Iowa State University (then Iowa State College) and completed the B.S. degree in Architectural Engineering in 1929. Returning to Iowa State after two architectural fellowships, Heffernan received an M.S. in Architectural Engineering in 1931. After teaching Freehand Drawing and Elementary Design at Iowa State for two years, Heffernan entered graduate school at Harvard University and received a Master of Architecture degree in 1935.

Following a three year period of study at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, Heffernan returned to the United States in 1938 and took a position on the faculty of the Department of Architecture at Georgia Tech. He remained at Tech for the rest of his professional life. After Harold Bush-Brown's retirement in 1956, Heffernan became the Director of the School of Architecture, a position he held until his own retirement in 1976.