Macon’s Massee apartments celebrates 90 years

After hours of polishing, a brass plate in the freight elevator of The Massee apartments recently came back to life.

Sandy Smallwood painstakingly rubbed away years of thick paint in his quest to restore the splendor of the towering brick building on College Street in downtown Macon. Established in 1924, it celebrates 90 years this year.

“Before we even bought the building, I spent my time researching the building,” said Smallwood, president of Andrex, a Canadian company specializing in the redevelopment of landmark buildings.

Although he has restored numerous landmarks around Ottawa, Canada, his heart belongs to the “grande dame” apartment buildings that sprang up after World War I.

He fell in love with The Massee on a scouting trip for American investments.

Smallwood purchased it with Roger Ohan, chief financial officer of Wilberfoss Inc., a real estate investment firm that buys and rents apartments in Canada and the U.S.

They specialize in buildings from the first third of the 20th century, and The Massee went up in the middle of the Roaring ‘20s.

“For us to be able to understand where the building should be, you need to understand where the building was,” Smallwood said. “The idea for us was to, first of all, understand the architecture and the intent of the building.”

MASSEE BROTHERS LEAVE MARK

The famous Neel Reid designed the building commissioned by the Massee brothers -- Oliver Jerome (Jack) Massee and William Jordan Massee Sr., who inspired Tennessee Williams’ “Big Daddy” in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.”

The siblings were two of four sons born to a very successful peach farmer.

Jack and Jordan were business and industrial magnates who brought electricity to Macon from the first hydroelectric plant in Georgia and ran the Bibb Brick Co.

They traveled back and forth to New York so much that a prominent store in the city kept cement casts of their feet for custom-made shoes, said Suzanne Doonan, archivist and research historian for Riverside Cemetery.

Some of the family members are buried in the Macon cemetery, including Jack, who is featured in next month’s Spirits in October.

“I think they should be remembered for the many technological and industrial advancements they brought to the area,” Doonan said.

Ohan credits the Massees and Reid for dropping a piece of Manhattan magnificence on one of Macon’s highest crests.

“The only place that I’ve been to that has places similar to this is New York City,” said Ohan. “The grand old apartment buildings that were built in the early part of the 20th century for the greatest families -- the most wealthy families in the U.S. and the world -- were built to replicate their town houses. So instead of living in a town house, they would live in a town house in the sky.”

From the penthouse, you can practically see the old Massee family land near Marshallville, where a portion of it belongs to the American Camellia Society for its headquarters at Massee Lane Gardens.

That luxurious top floor apartment has the original multi-head shower fashioned out of subway tiles that are back in vogue.

“This would have been the height of decadence in the ‘20s,” Smallwood said.

After the stock market crash led to the Great Depression, Jordan Massee sold his sprawling gold brick mansion up College Street and moved his family to the apartments.

In Smallwood’s research, he was told the building went up at 347 College St. after a dispute with a neighbor across the street.

“You’re never going to see the sun set again,” Jordan Massee reportedly said as he stormed out of a social gathering.

“I suspect they took it as a death threat,” Smallwood said, but it proved true.

The building started going up two months later, blocking the view of the setting sun for the house across the street.

HOME IN THE SKY

Retired barber Margo Murdock has two fifth-floor balconies from which she enjoys sunsets and Fourth of July fireworks shot off from Idle Hour Country Club and Lake Tobesofkee.

The 68-year-old sees Plant Scherer in Monroe County, Hartley Bridge Road in south Bibb, and the Town Creek Reservoir in Jones County from the perch she shares with hummingbirds and plants.

“One (balcony) I raise vegetables, and one I grow flowers and trees,” said Murdock, who moved from her three-bedroom house in Shirley Hills five years ago.

“I really live here,” she said. “We’re so lucky to have people who really care about this building.”

She’s watched as the new owners put up historic photographs in the lobby and melted away decades of wax buildup on the black and white checkered marble floor.

Coats of black paint had buried the marble steps leading up to the elevator.

“Not all the maintenance has taken place, so over time it’s been allowed to become a little bit more rundown than it should be,” Ohan said. “But it’s a gemstone that can be polished.”

And Smallwood intends to do that, one piece of brass at a time.

Pike County native and painting contractor Josh Campbell moved into the penthouse a couple months ago. The 33-year-old had been working at the building seven years.

“The old owners they didn’t want to do anything. It was all about putting Band-Aids on the building,” Campbell said.

Living city-style, high enough to nearly see patches of land at his old home in Thomaston, took some getting used to, but he escapes to the lake or river on the weekends.

Weekdays, he and others are sprucing up vacant apartments in an effort to restore the whole place, including the original, precisely cut windows and French doors along the front patio.

A REBIRTH

While Smallwood is enamored with the rich history, Ohan was sold on the masonry construction of every wall, even ones in the units.

“He’s the brakes, and I’m the gas pedal,” Smallwood said. “I’m the bricks and mortar guy, and he’s the money man.”

Ohan saw The Massee as a solid investment.

“Even the walls around the cupboards are masonry walls, so this building would take a nuclear bomb to knock down,” he said.

Those walls make it nice and quiet for Mercer University economics professor Aleksandar Tomic, who is originally from Montenegro in southeastern Europe.

He moved in a dozen years ago but went to Europe to marry. Tomic could have settled his family anywhere but chose to return to Macon and The Massee.

The couple is now raising a toddler in the high-rise that is enjoying its own rebirth.

“There have been two babies in The Massee in the last six months,” Tomic said. “I can’t remember any babies during the last time I lived here.”

To celebrate the apartment building’s 90 years, the owners are throwing a bash Sunday at 4 p.m.

Guests are invited to share light refreshments, including birthday cake, sample a local brew from Macon Beer Company, or enjoy a glass of wine before the Second Sunday concert at nearby Washington Park.

“What’s unusual is how little this building has changed over the years,” Smallwood said.

And aside from adding central heat and air and modern wiring, they intend to keep it that way.

To contact writer Liz Fabian, call 744-4303.

This story was originally published September 12, 2014 at 10:29 PM with the headline "Macon’s Massee apartments celebrates 90 years ."