Toombs, Amisano, and Wells Records

Formed in about 1955, the Atlanta architectural firm of Toombs, Amisano, and Wells created numerous Atlanta landmarks of the 1960s through the 1980s, including the original Lenox Square shopping mall, Woodruff Memorial Arts Center, Peachtree Center MARTA station, Fernbank Science Center, and many other buildings. The architects were also responsible for a number of important buildings in other locations in the Southeast, such as science and laboratory buildings at the University of Georgia, the Omni International in Miami, and Norfolk Gardens in Norfolk, Virginia.

The founding member of the firm, Henry Johnston Toombs, was born in Cuthbert, Georgia on January 3, 1896. Toombs attended the U.S. Naval Academy and served in World War I before beginning a career in architecture. After receiving a B.S. (1921) and M.A. (1923) in Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania, he worked briefly for the New York architectural firm of McKin, Mead, and White. In about 1926, he began independent work for Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, who eventually hired him to design and build the complex of buildings that was to become the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation. Toombs opened offices in Warm Springs and Atlanta in 1937. The partnership of Toombs and Creighton formed in 1946 and dissolved three years later. In 1949, Toombs formed Toombs and Company, which was soon to become Toombs and Wells. Joseph Amisano became a partner in the firm in 1955. Toombs died in 1967.

James Edwin Wells, who was born in Zebulon, Georgia, on September 23, 1908, was a 1930 graduate in Architecture at the Georgia School of Technology. In 1937, he joined Toombs' firm and continued to work there, except for a brief period during World War II, until his retirement in 1974.

Joseph Amisano was born January 10, 1917 in the Bronx, NY to parents Ernesto Amisano and Mariucia Ferraris Amisano. Amisano studied at the Pratt Institute, where he received Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Architecture in 1940 and 1941, respectively. After graduating he worked in the Manhattan firms of Sanders and Breck, and Harrison, Abramowitz and Fouilhoux. In 1942 he also had the opportunity to take part in the airport development program of Pan American Airways, which took him to Panama and Brazil, where he first encountered the built work of Oscar Niemeyer. As a winner of the prestigious Rome Prize in 1950, Amisano spent two years studying architecture and traveling throughout Europe. In 1954, he joined the partnership of Toombs and Wells in Atlanta; he became a partner in the firm in the following year. The Lenox Square Shopping Center created by the firm, with its original open-air arcade, immediately became a major Atlanta landmark on its completion in 1959. The firm went on to design such notable buildings as the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia (1962), the Fernbank Science Center (1963-1965), the John Knox Church (1964-1965), the Federal Reserve Bank (early 1960s), the Peachtree Summit Building (1975-1978), Peachtree Center MARTA Station (1975-1982), Woodruff Library-Atlanta University Center (early 1980s), and the Second Church of Christ, Scientist (1984-1986). Amisano was married to Rosellen Amisano for 42 years. He died on April 12, 2008 after a long illness.