“We really are a tear down city,” says Boyd Coons, executive director of the Atlanta Preservation Center. “It’s not difficult for people to knock down a historic building in Atlanta. In fact, it’s quite easy.”

We’re talking in the restored rooms of an 1856 Italianate mansion built for railroad magnate Lemuel P Grant. One of only three pre-Civil War structures to survive General Sherman’s burning of Atlanta, it had been neglected for decades and was scheduled for demolition when the APC bought it in 2001. They saved the first floor and it is now their headquarters.

In the garden Coons points to the upturned top section of a column, maybe four feet in diameter. It is all that remains of the original Equitable Building – an eight-story office completed in 1892 for streetcar tycoon and developer Joel Hurt.

The original 1892 Equitable Building pictured not long before its 1971 demolition

After the original Equitable was demolished in 1971, the columns were taken away and dumped. “For 40 years they were just sitting in a pile,” says Coons. “About a decade ago, when the land where they were left was being sold off, we bought this section of column. The rest of the remains of the building were dumped somewhere in a landfill out by the prison. That’s typical of Atlanta and its attitude to history.”

A new Equitable Building was built nearby in the late 1960s. The 32-story skyscraper, designed by architects SOM, is on the site of the 1903 Piedmont Hotel, which boasted US presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson among its guests. The hotel was demolished in 1963.

The Piedmont Hotel and the Equitable Building which now stands on the site

One of the first historic buildings to go was Kimball House, a grand 360-room hotel which took up an entire downtown block. Rebuilt in 1883 after a fire, it was known for its opulent decor and spectacular chandeliers. The building was torn down in 1959 and replaced with a multi-story parking lot.

Kimball House was torn down in 1959 and replaced with a parking lot

Terminal Station went in 1972. The grand 1905 building was designed in Renaissance Revival style by P Thornton Marye. It was torn down to make space for the 26-story Richard B Russell federal building.

The Renaissance Revival-style Terminal Station and its 1972 demolition

The same year also saw the demolition of the 1930s Union Station. The construction of the now-closed Underground Atlanta shopping and entertainment district, and the MARTA metro system, largely obliterated the site.

The 1930s Union Station

The Carnegie Library went in 1977. The classical structure, designed by New York architects Ackerman and Ross, opened in 1902. It had been a gift from industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. A replacement library was built on the site. As part of the preparations for the 1996 Olympics, a monument was commissioned to stand in Hardy Ivy Park, made from remains of the original building.

The classical Carnegie Library in 1911. It was dismantled in 1977

Loew’s Grand Theater was lost the following year. It was best known as the site of the 1939 premiere of Gone With the Wind – from which the African American actors who appeared in the film were excluded. The theater was built in 1893 as DeGive’s Grand Opera House.

Loew’s Grand hosts the premiere of Gone With The Wind in 1939, and pictured in 1954

Another to go was the Gulf Oil offices – the first building in the world designed by IM Pei. The Chinese-American architect later built the Louvre Pyramid in Paris and the Bank of China Tower in Hong Kong, but his first building is now no more.

The Gulf Oil offices on Ponce De Leon Avenue - IM Pei’s first building

The developers who demolished the offices retained the marble panels and built a reconstruction on one corner of the site which bears a resemblance to the original. It acts as the lobby for a luxury apartment complex about 30 times the size of Pei’s original building.

Coons says the Gulf Oil building was not designated, and the APC’s moral arguments for its preservation went unheard. “The developer sold it as a renovation,” he adds. “They said, ‘Don’t worry, we’re going to do the right thing.’ When you hear that you should worry. We thought people would almost certainly stop to think that we are destroying something which is known across the world, but no, they went right ahead. We lost one of the real icons of the modernist movement.”

We thought people would stop to think we are destroying something known across the world, but no … Boyd Coons

Even powerful Atlanta architect John Portman couldn’t escape the wrecking ball. His only public housing project, the Antoine Graves senior citizens building, built in 1965, was one of his earliest designs. It featured his first atrium, in a concept he later adapted for the Hyatt Regency hotel that helped make his name for spectacular interiors. It was demolished in 2008 after suffering tornado damage.

The demolitions keep on coming. As Coons warns, being on the national register of historic places does not mean a building is safe. Craigie House in Ansley Park – built in 1911 by the Daughters of the American Revolution – had been abandoned for decades before it was bought in 2012 by a couple who planned to renovate it into a single family home. The facade with its four Corinthian columns survived a snowstorm which put paid to the rest of the house. The site was completely razed in 2016.

The facade of Craigie House was demolished in 2016

The brutalist Georgia Archives building was spectacularly demolished last year. Designed by A Thomas Bradbury, it was hailed as the most advanced archive in the country when it was completed in 1965. The state of Georgia said the building suffered structural damage from the nearby I-75/85 and I-20 interstates. It will be replaced by a new Georgia Supreme Court and Court of Appeals.

Coons believes the residents of Atlanta do want to preserve historic and important buildings. “There is a real appetite for preservation,” he says. “People want a sense of place. They want to be in a place with an identity and a character.”

The fight continues

Current buildings under threat include the 1869 Gaines Hall at Atlanta University Center, which was significantly damaged by fire three years ago, and Marcel Breuer’s brutalist Fulton Central Library, which Coons says is as important to Downtown Atlanta as Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim is to New York.

Gaines Hall, pictured last year, continues to deteriorate

Coons is also concerned for the future of Paschal’s, the restaurant which served as the unofficial headquarters for the Civil Rights Movement during the 60s. Martin Luther King and others often met there to plan protest marches, sit-ins and strategies and it became known as the Black City Hall. The building is in an accelerated state of disrepair.

The exterior of Paschal’s pictured in 1987

The APC is campaigning to keep the Zero Mile Post – which marks the place where the city’s first railroad ended (the railroad being the reason for Atlanta’s existence) – in its original location. The building housing the post in slated for demolition, and the developers have given no guarantees that it will be returned to the place it has been since 1850.

The Zero Mile Post marks the place where the city’s first railroad ended

“We’ve got to save the best things,” says Coons. “They are the material for a better future city. Atlanta is a forward-looking place, and proud of it - but there’s nothing to say that can’t involve preservation. And anything has to be more interesting than a parking lot.”

Guardian Cities is live in Atlanta for a special series of in-depth reporting. Share your experiences of the city in the comments below, on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram using #GuardianATL, or via email to cities@theguardian.com