History Spotlight: Columbus Coca-Cola Bottling Company - 1147 Sixth Avenue

SOURCE: Columbus Coca-Cola Bottling Company, National Register of Historic Places Nomination. Prepared by Kenneth M. Henson, Jr. and Laura Beth Ingle. 2022. Several of the historic images are courtesy of David Phillips.

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Dr. John Pemberton, son Charles, and wife Ann Eliza Clifford Lewis.

In Columbus, Dr. John S. Pemberton, a local druggist, developed a tonic he called French Wine Coca. Pemberton initially created the concoction with the hope that it would remedy headaches. However, as he reworked the formula, removing its alcohol and adding water and club soda, he landed on the beverage he began calling Coca-Cola Syrup and Extract. He soon shortened this name to simply “Coca-Cola.”

In early May of 1886, Pemberton took his syrup to Jacob’s Drug Store in the Five Points district of Atlanta, exposing the product to a larger audience. For about a decade, Coca-Cola was solely distributed from soda fountains, so its exposure and sales opportunities were somewhat limited. But clever and persistent marketing ensured it was in as many drugstores’ soda fountains as possible.

Asa G. Candler

Asa Griggs Candler, a wholesale druggist, from Atlanta was the man behind the push to sell Coca-Cola and advertised it as a “brain tonic” that could cure headaches and exhaustion and a “nerve tonic” that could calm the most jangled nineteenth century sensibilities. In 1888, Candler had purchased Pemberton’s rights and interests in Coca-Cola and quickly began an aggressive marketing campaign. Just seven years later, in 1895, Candler would report to his shareholders that Coca-Cola was sold and consumed in every state across the country. Sales of its syrup had grown from just over 2,000 gallons in 1889 to more than 64,000 gallons in 1894. Business was booming.

In the summer of 1894, one of the soda fountain proprietors, Joseph August Bierdenharn (below) of Vicksburg, Mississippi, realized that not everyone, especially in the rural south, could access a soda fountain in order to drink a Coca-Cola. On a whim, he decided to bottle the drink, and he is generally credited as the first bottler. However, three men from Chattanooga, Tennessee, Benjamin Franklin Thomas, Joseph Brown Whitehead, and John Thomas Lupton, are usually thought of as the founders of the Coca-Cola bottling industry.

In 1899, Whitehead and Thomas approached Candler about selling Coca-Cola at baseball parks, but Candler refused. He said he had “neither the money, the time, or the brains to embark in the bottling business.” Candler said, “there are too many who are not responsible, who care nothing about the reputation of what they put up, and I am afraid the name will be injured.” However, the men persisted, Candler relented, and on July 21 of the same year, they signed a perpetual contract for the exclusive bottling rights of Coca-Cola across the United States. This contract excluded New England, Mississippi, and Texas, but those exceptions hardly slowed down business.

Returning to Chattanooga, Thomas and Whitehead founded “The Coca-Cola Bottling Company,” and soon thereafter, Thomas opened the company’s first bottling plant. Whitehead, unable to come up with the necessary $5,000 to start his own plant, was forced to partner with Lupton, who, for one-half of Whitehead’s half interest in the bottling company, provided additional funding, and the pair opened the second Coca-Cola Bottling Company plant in the country, in April 1900. This second plant, originally known as the Dixie Coca-Cola Bottling Company, was located at the southeast corner of Edgewood Avenue and Courtland Street in Atlanta.

The terms of Thomas and Whitehead’s contract with Candler called for the pair to satisfy demand for the bottled product throughout the country. But they quickly realized that setting up bottling plants, staffing the plants, and delivering the finished product was just as expensive and time consuming as Candler had suggested. As a result, they devised a system to subcontract the bottling rights to private investors throughout the country. With permission of the Coca-Cola Company, they partnered with qualified local businessmen who were willing to invest their own capital in return for the exclusive rights to bottle and sell Coca-Cola within a local territory.

The local partners needed about $4,000 to start a bottling business. This investment would cover machinery and equipment, a horse and wagon, and a bit of extra capital for expenses, while the “parent bottler” (either Thomas or Whitehead depending on the location of the franchise) would supply the franchisee with advertising and a proficient bottler and caps. The franchisee would purchase Coca-Cola syrup from the parent bottler, bottle the beverage, and then the parent bottler and franchisee would split the profits.

By 1903, there were nine bottling plants serving 35 counties across Georgia. In the first decade of the 20th century, territories of a local bottling plant were often determined by the distance a mule team could travel in a day, as this was the distance the product could travel from the plant. But with new and advancing technologies, this has changed. The popularity of Coca-Cola grew, and the demand for more products from more bottlers increased. As a result, the number of Georgia bottling plants increased over the next decade, and by 1930, there were 41 plants in Georgia.

In small towns in Georgia and across the country, Coca-Cola bottlers became prominent figures and leaders in their communities. This prompted Asa Candler to write in the January 1911 edition of The Bottler, “I cannot refrain from expressing my cordial appreciation of the high character of men who represent the bottling department of this corporation throughout the country. I find them actively associated with commercial bodies, lending their help toward building up the material and moral interests in their localities. Generally, they are officially connected with some church, and are depended upon for active, useful service in connection with church influences and purposes...”

In Columbus, bottling operations began fairly early, as the third Coca-Cola Bottling Company franchise in Georgia was bought by Columbus Roberts (above), a grocer from Beulah, Alabama in 1901. The territory for Roberts’ franchise included Columbus, Richland, Manchester, Lagrange, and West Point in Georgia and Opelika, Tuskegee, Hurtsboro, Eufaula, and Alexander City in Alabama. In 1902, Roberts began bottling in the rear of a building at the corner of 1st Avenue and 13th Street, and like other early franchises, the initial mode of product delivery was via a single mule-drawn wagon.

After Roberts operated the business successfully for several years, he decided to build a new plant. He completed the Columbus Coca-Cola Bottling Company plant building at 1147 Sixth Avenue on May 1, 1905. The three-story building was state of the art and allowed the business to continue to grow and expand. However, Roberts may have overshot the expansion and necessary square footage for his operations. According to 1907 Sanborn maps, the Columbus Coca-Cola Bottling Company storehouse and bottling works occupied a much larger footprint, with a two-story wing of the building extending north to 12th Street. By 1918, the site of this northern wing was occupied by the Terminal Hotel, rather than Coca-Cola operations, and it was demolished in the 1980s.

Like other properties associated with Coca-Cola, the façade of the Columbus plant featured company marketing and signage, which changed every few years. The earliest photographs of the building show signage advertising Coca-Cola as “Delicious and Refreshing,” noting that it “Relieves Fatigue,” and costs five cents. The price for a case of Coca-Cola was 80 cents from 1902 until 1958, when it increased to $1.00.

For several decades, just above the large display windows on the ground floor, signage read “Come in and see how Coca-Cola is bottled!” and “It pays to be clean!” At one point in the 1920s, the upper floor windows were covered so that additional signage could be added, and in the late 1930s, the building was painted white and had a large round Coca-Cola logo covering the majority of the second and third floor facade.

As the signage changed, so did the building and its operations. With the introduction of motor vehicles, the Columbus plant expanded to include additional warehouse space, a garage, and a drive-through alley to access these spaces from Sixth Avenue. The garage is no longer extant, but the warehouse and alley remain intact. The company’s product offerings also expanded with the introduction of take-home beverage cartons in 1923.

In 1932, Columbus Roberts, Jr. (above), took over the management of the company from his father. In the same year, the plant celebrated its 30th anniversary. Bottling capacity at this time was 86 bottles per minute, and there were 12 motor vehicles in the fleet and 40 employees. In 1936, Columbus Coca-Cola added new equipment to double its bottling capacity. And in 1940, construction began on the new and more modern plant at 305 17th Street. The company moved operations to its new location on July 3, 1941.

From 1944 until 1986, the building on Sixth Avenue was used as a warehouse by the Rothschild Company, which operated a fabric company on 12th Street, adjoining this property. Total System Services, Inc. (TSYS) bought the building from Georgia Crown Distributing on November 16, 1987, and continued to use it as a warehouse. Because the building was used as a storage facility for more than four decades, there was very minimal change to the building after Coca-Cola’s departure. On December 14, 2018, it was purchased by 1147, LLC for rehabilitation and use as a commercial property. In May, the building will have a new occupant bringing new life and vibrancy - The Community Foundation of the Chattahoochee Valley!