commercial work

Running the usual gamut of buildings for a prospering architectural practice of the post-war period, the firm’s commercial buildings also reflected Loewenstein’s belief in the community and civic engagement. In the 1950s, the firm designed schools, hospitals, religious buildings, and public facilities, including the award-winning Woman’s College Coleman Gymnasium (1952). In the more tumultuous 1960s, the firm designed the Golden Gate Shopping Center (1961) to provide an easily accessed store east of Elm Street for the growing populations on that edge of town. Through the Bessemer Land Company, Loewenstein and the firm’s employees still worked in traditionally African-American neighborhoods in east Greensboro. Several commissions came through Cone Mills and its related institutions, including the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church (ca. 1965) and school complex near the mill. The Greensboro Public Library (1964), the most lasting community building and a symbol of progress, demonstrated that the building emblematically remained an important landmark and anchored civic pride of the community in troubling times.

Selected Commercial Work of Loewenstein-Atkinson