ROSWELL, Ga. (Atlanta News First) – Workers began the process of taking apart a historic building and Roswell’s first Black-owned business on Tuesday.

The work begins a two-month-long process of ‘deconstructing’ Doc’s Café, a historic Roswell building in the Grove Way neighborhood.

“Doc’s Café was the restaurant that back in the 50s and 60s that our Black community would go to in their neighborhood,” said Julie Brechbill, the city’s communications director.

Doc’s Cafe is borderline derelict now. It’s no longer at its original location and sits behind bushes at Oxbo Linear Park.

“It’s not demolishing the building at all,” Brechbill said.

Instead, a construction and historian team will go through the building piece by piece, taking it apart, and storing it in containers for future reconstruction.

“They’re taking 3D drawings, they’re taking CAD photographs, and they’re taking photographs,” said Cara Cramer, the mayor’s press secretary.

Doc’s Café was originally located on Pleasant Hill Street, just a few blocks away, but a city project to expand Oxbo Road required it to be moved.

Now, it sits mostly hidden from the street.

The Grove Way Community stakeholders, longtime residents of the area, want the building to find a home in the community.

“We would like for it to stay in the Black community as a historical site and be deemed as a historical site for the Black community,” said Gail Bohannon McCoy back in late March.

The city eventually decided on deconstruction, holding it in storage until a long-term decision can be made.

“I’d like to make Doc’s Café relevant,” said Mayor Kurt Wilson. “I’d like to make it active. I’d like people to know about it. I’d like people to visit it.”

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