The up-freight (export) warehouse, primarily constructed of Savannah Grey brick, provided through-storage for freight transferred from the building’s north side on Turner Boulevard (formerly New Street) to rolling stock in the freight yard. The warehouse was divided into sections by demising walls (visible between the museum galleries) that provided structural support, impeded the spread of fire, and allowed each section to be leased to separate shippers with their respective products. Vestiges of the different companies’ painted advertising survive on the Turner Boulevard exterior wall. In 1988 SCAD acquired the building, which was already a partial ruin.
Significant donations of art to the college in the early 2000s prompted the creation of a new museum. Atlanta architects Lord Aeck Sargent, collaborating with local firms Sottile and Sottile and Dawson Architects, employed a modernist design principally using concrete and glass that consciously contrasted with the surviving brick fragments of the warehouse. All standing brick walls were retained and stabilized, while bricks from parts of the building that had collapsed were utilized for landscaping features. No historic bricks left the site and no new bricks were added. The museum’s main entrance on Turner Boulevard is marked by an 86-foot steel and glass rectangular tower that signals the building’s civic role and landmark ambitions. Former arched doorways to either side are framed by projecting glass display cases. An unpretentious staircase leads to second-floor classrooms above the galleries and a terrace overlooking the courtyard. A 250-seat theater, unusual for its broad and shallow proportions, fills the area west of the lobby.