Mills Lane

Who was Mills Lane?

Mills B. Lane, Jr. was a banker in Atlanta, Georgia.

He was born in Savannah, Georgia, and after graduating from Yale University in 1934 took a job as a clerk at a Citizens & Southern National Bank branch in Valdosta, Georgia. The bank had been founded by Lane's father in 1906 and when the senior Lane died in 1946, Lane, Jr., became the bank's president.

As president of C&S, Mills Lane funded the design and construction of Mayor Ivan Allen, Jr.'s dream of a new baseball stadium for the city of Atlanta. The site was a recently cleared slum, then known as Washington-Rawson, and Atlanta Stadium was completed a mere twelve months after a handshake deal between Lane and the Milwaukee Braves' owners. The rush was to ensure that the 1965 season could be played in the new stadium, but a lawsuit brought by Milwaukee, Wisconsin, delayed the start of baseball in Atlanta until April, 1966.

Lane's other famous building project was his new bank headquarters, the cylindrical C&S tower at West Peachtree and North Avenue, which was eventually demolished to make room for the western expansion of the Bank of America Plaza.

When Lane retired in 1973, C&S was the largest bank in the South.