Frazier and Bodin

An early plan for Tuxedo Park, home to many Frazier and Bodin-designed homes.

Helen Comstock featured the foyer of the Floyd residence on the cover of her 1965 book, 100 Most Beautiful Rooms in America. Aquilla J. Orme“s Georgian Revival home was regularly featured in the society column of The Atlanta Constitution, which claimed events there were of “interest of society throughout the South.”

Dan Bodin in 1920.

A sketch for light fixtures on the James Henry residence shows the firm“s attention to detail.

Frazier and Bodin designed living rooms that were often lowered from the adjoining entry halls.

Elaborate Regency cornices, pilasters and mantels were used despite a wide variety of exterior styles ranging from Federal to Tudor Revival.

Few architecture firms have left as lasting an imprint on Atlanta as Frazier and Bodin. While the firm’s work is familiar to many Atlantans, few recognize the firm and these architects. During the formative years of what is now considered “Old Atlanta,” Charles Frazier and Dan Bodin produced as important commissions as their more renowned peers and had a client list that could match any firm in the city.

Charles Frazier was born in Griffin in 1883 and attended the Georgia School of Technology, now Georgia Tech, before there was an architecture program. After completing two years of study, Frazier apprenticed with two local architecture firms before hanging his own shingle in 1908. To this day, he’s recognized for his designs of Coca-Cola heir Asa G. Candler, Jr.’s Druid Hills mansion, Briarcliff, and the James Floyd residence, Boxwood, in Ansley Park.

Daniel Herman Bodin was born in 1895 in Svana, Sweden, and immigrated with his family to Youngstown, Ohio, when he was 5 years old. Bodin attended Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, where he studied architecture under Henry Hornbostel. After graduating in 1920, Bodin was hired by Hornbostel as a draftsman and worked on Callanwolde, the Tudor mansion built by Charles Howard Candler on Briarcliff Road. Hornbostel designed only a few Atlanta residences and is more recognized for his master planning and design of Emory University. After the completion of Callanwolde in 1921, Bodin remained in Atlanta and began working for Charles Frazier. He quickly became the firm’s principle designer and was made a partner in 1926. 

The firm flourished from 1926 until Frazier’s death in 1939, focusing on residential commissions and working primarily in the Tudor, Georgian and Colonial Revival styles. Frazier and Bodin is perhaps best known for its work with the Black family, who developed the Tuxedo Park area of Buckhead. The firm designed the majority of the houses that were built in the neighborhood prior to World War II, setting the tone for the entire development. Frazier died in 1939, and Bodin continued as Daniel H. Bodin Architect until World War II brought a halt to most building. After the war, Bodin formed a partnership with Willard Lamberson that continued until Bodin’s death in 1963. The residences Frazier and Bodin designed for Hugh P. Nunnally, Charles B. Nunnally, Charles King and Robert “Bobby” Jones are perhaps the firm’s most celebrated. In fact, the Nunnally house on Blackland Road was the background for many a photograph during the premier party of Gone With The Wind and became an iconic image for the growing Southern city.