Is 1923 Howell Mill Dr in East Hamilton School District
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Introduction
Essay on Antebellum Atlanta
Essay on Industrial Atlanta
Essay on African American Experience
Essay on Growth and Preservation
List of Sites
Begin the Tour
Learn More
Credits
Introduction
The National Park Service's National Register of Historic Places and Southeast Regional Office, in conjunction with the Atlanta History Center, the Historic Preservation Division of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, and the National Conference of State Historic Preservation Officers (NCSHPO), proudly invite you to explore Atlanta, Georgia. Atlanta began as the terminal point of the Western and Atlantic Railroad, a project authorized by the State of Georgia in 1836. Originally known as Terminus, and later Marthasville, by the Civil War Atlanta was a bustling city. Crippled by the burning of the city during the war, Atlanta rebounded during the last part of the century. Today it is home to more than 4 million people and is considered the entertainment and cultural center of the South, attracting more than 17 million travelers each year. This latest National Register of Historic Places travel itinerary highlights 70 historic places that tell the story of this capital city--from its picturesque homes to its reaching skyscrapers--tales of former slaves, educators, authors, and millionaires who have shaped the development of Atlanta over the past two centuries.
Union General William T. Sherman's occupation of Atlanta during the Civil War left much of the city in ruin, and antebellum era buildings such as the Tullie Smith House are today a rarity. Yet Atlantans rebuilt quickly as the city became the junction of three of the region's most important railroad lines, and the location for the Georgia State Capitol in 1868. The end of the 19th century brought great industrial development, with factories such as E. Van Winkle's Gin and Machine Works, lining the railroad corridors radiating from downtown. By the turn of the century, skyscrapers such as the English-American Building were dotting the city's skyline, and the dense redevelopment of downtown Atlanta had pushed residents to the edges of the city. Numerous suburban developments emerged such as West End, Inman Park, Druid Hills and Ansley Park. African Americans were establishing their own neighborhoods of Washington Park and Sweet Auburn, and institutions such as Atlanta University. Atlanta became the birthplace of the Coca-Cola empire--home to the company's founder, Asa Candler, who erected the Candler Building as a monument to himself, and the location of the early Dixie Coca-Cola Bottling Company Plant. Popular authors Margaret Mitchell (Gone With the Wind) and Joel Chandler Harris (Uncle Remus Tales) called Atlanta home, as well as major leaders in the black community such as Alonzo Herndon, a former slave who founded the Atlanta Life Insurance Company, and Civil Rights movement leader, Martin Luther King, Jr.
Atlanta, Georgia offers several ways to discover these places that reflect the history of this southern city. Each highlighted site features a brief description of the place's historic significance, color and, where available, historic photographs, and public accessibility information. At the bottom of each page the visitor will find a navigation bar containing links to four essays that explain more about Antebellum Atlanta, Industrial Atlanta, the African American Experience, and Growth and Preservation. These essays provide historic background, or "contexts," for many of the places included in the itinerary. In the Learn More section, the itineraries link to regional and local web sites that provide visitors with further information regarding cultural events, special activities, and lodging and dining possibilities. The itinerary can be viewed online, or printed out if you plan to visit Atlanta in person.
Created through a partnership between the National Park Service's National Register of Historic Places and Southeast Regional Office, in cooperation with the Atlanta History Center, the Historic Preservation Division of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources and NCSHPO, Atlanta, Georgia is the latest example of a new and exciting cooperative project. As part of the Department of the Interior's strategy to promote public awareness of history and encourage tourists to visit historic places throughout the nation, the National Register of Historic Places is cooperating with communities, regions, and Heritage Areas throughout the United States to create online travel itineraries. Using places nominated by State, Federal and Tribal Historic Preservation Offices and listed in the National Register of Historic Places, the itineraries help potential visitors plan their next trip by highlighting the amazing diversity of this country's historic places and supplying accessibility information for each featured site. Atlanta, Georgia is the 25th National Register travel itinerary successfully created through such partnerships. Additional itineraries will debut online in the future. The National Register of Historic Places and Southeast Regional Office hope you enjoy this virtual travel itinerary of Atlanta's heritage. If you have any comments or questions, please just click on the provided e-mail address, "comments or questions" located at the bottom of each page.
Antebellum Atlanta
Today, Atlanta is often identified with its major air transportation hub and automobile-oriented culture. This association is only fitting, since antebellum Atlanta quickly grew from a frontier outpost to a bustling city largely due to the rise of transportation. From old Indian trails to ferries to railroads, Atlanta's early history is intertwined with the movement of people and goods. Atlanta's economy and its youth--it was founded in 1837--made it vastly different from the plantation South and older eastern seaboard cities like Savannah and Charleston. Instead of a planter aristocracy, the leaders of pre-Civil War Atlanta were more likely to be merchants or railroad men.
The original inhabitants of the north Georgia locale that would one day become the Atlanta metropolitan area were the Cherokee and Creek nations, with the Chattahoochee River separating the two. Despite treaties and other official policies prohibiting white encroachment, white settlers moved into the region. In 1830 the United States Congress passed the Indian Removal Act, which called for the relocation of all southeastern Indians to western territories. The Cherokee Nation contested the act in court, but the discovery of gold on Cherokee lands near Dahlonega in 1832 brought an influx of white squatters and gold hunters, and the state of Georgia illegally surveyed and parceled out the Indian lands. In 1838 General Winfield Scott and his troops rounded up the Indians and began the forced march west to Arkansas and Oklahoma. Some 18,000 Indians were forced to leave their homes and lands in Georgia on a journey known as the "Trail of Tears." Almost 4,000 died en route. The lands they formerly occupied were opened to white development, but evidence of the first inhabitants abounds in geographic names still used today: Chattahoochee and Oconee from the Creeks, and Kennesaw, Tallulah, and Dahlonega from the Cherokees.
In 1837 the Western and Atlantic Railroad, a state-sponsored project, established a town at the termination point for the railroad, calling that location "Terminus." You can see that railroad's historic Western and Atlantic Railroad Zero Milepost just north of Underground Atlanta, a shopping and entertainment area. In 1843 the town was named Marthasville in honor of the daughter of former Governor Wilson Lumpkin, who had been instrumental in bringing railroads to the area. Two years later, the town was incorporated as Atlanta. The origin of this name is the subject of some debate, with some people saying that it is the feminine version of the "Atlantic" part of the railroad's name, while others believe it is a variation of Martha Lumpkin's middle name, Atalanta. Some cities in the metropolitan area were founded earlier than Atlanta: Lawrenceville (1821), Decatur (1823), and Fayetteville (1827).
Because of the Chattahoochee River, some of the earliest businesses in Atlanta were ferries and mills. The road named after Hardy Pace's ferry--Paces Ferry--winds its way in front of the governor's mansion and other prestigious addresses in the upscale Buckhead section of Atlanta. The site of James Power's ferry, and the road named after it (Powers Ferry), is now the location of numerous office parks and apartment complexes. Some of these ferry services survived well into the 20th century. Antebellum gristmills and sawmills also left behind traces through such names as Moores Mill Road and Howell Mill Road.
Railroads, however, were the key to Atlanta's rapid growth. In 1836, only 35 families occupied the area. The population expanded to 2,572 residents by 1850. At the beginning of the Civil War, Atlanta, with a population of more than 9,000, was the connecting point for several rail lines, including the Georgia Railroad from Augusta, Georgia; the Macon and Western, from Macon, Georgia; the Atlanta and West Point to West Point, Georgia; and the original railroad that created Atlanta, the Western and Atlantic to Chattanooga, Tennessee. Railroad-related industries thrived, including the Atlanta Rolling Mill, the second largest manufacturer of railroad tracks in the Southeast. These businesses and railroads centered on the area that Underground Atlanta occupies today.
Another antebellum landmark is Oakland Cemetery, Atlanta's first municipal cemetery, established in 1850. If you are looking for an antebellum Georgia plantation, Tullie Smith Farm at the Atlanta History Center on West Paces Ferry Road demonstrates how some north Georgia farmers lived and worked. This plantation-plain-style house was built just outside the present-day city by the Robert Smith family in the 1840s. Smith was a yeoman farmer who owned 11 slaves and cultivated about two hundred acres in DeKalb County. Hogs and cattle ranged freely on the other 600 acres. Despite popular belief to the contrary, the large, extravagant plantations of Hollywood and romantic novels were more the exception than the rule in the Upper Piedmont portion of the South. Tullie Smith Farm consists of a farmhouse, a separate open-hearth kitchen, vegetable, herb, and flower gardens, a blacksmith shop, a smokehouse, and a barn complete with animals. Living history interpreters lead tours and demonstrate the crafts and everyday activities.
While some enslaved persons in antebellum Atlanta were agricultural laborers, most worked as general laborers and domestic servants or else pursued skilled trades as brickmasons, carpenters, and blacksmiths. Many of these slaves were hired out and sometimes were allowed to keep a portion of their wages. These men and women often went about their daily lives with little or no interference from their owners, but the city passed numerous ordinances restricting their movement and assigned much harsher penalties for slaves and free blacks found guilty of infractions than whites guilty of the same offense.
While at the Atlanta History Center, visit the permanent exhibition Metropolitan Frontiers. This exhibition presents the story of Atlanta, from the original Indian inhabitants through its emergence as a major transportation and global communications hub, told through photographs, rare artifacts, and video and audio clips.
Essay by Andy Ambrose, Karen Leathem and Charles Smith of the Atlanta History Center. For more on Atlanta's history, see: Andy Ambrose, Atlanta: An Illustrated History. Athens, Ga.: Hill Street Press, 2003.
Industrial Atlanta
When General William T. Sherman and his 98,000 Union soldiers marched out of Chattanooga in early May 1864, few Atlantans felt threatened, confident in General Joseph E. Johnston's ability to keep the Yankee intruders at bay. Outgunned and out-manned, however, Johnston could only feint and parry with his enemy and, in spite of significant Confederate victories at Resaca, New Hope Church, and Kennesaw Mountain, the 50,000-man Confederate army was forced to withdraw to the south side of the Chattahoochee River by early July, burning the bridges at their rear as they took up positions in the heavy fortifications that ringed Atlanta. Two weeks later, the entire Union army had crossed the river as well and even the Confederates' new general, John Bell Hood, could not stave off the inevitable.
Fierce fighting north of the city at Peachtree Creek cost the Confederates nearly 5,000 casualties on July 20. Two days later, another 7,000 were lost east of the city at what became known as the Battle of Atlanta, an engagement immortalized in the Cyclorama at Grant Park. As the city was subjected to a month-long bombardment by Union gunners, the battles at Ezra Church on July 28 and at Jonesboro on August 31 cost the Confederates another 10,000 casualties and finally forced the city's capitulation on September 2. Residents who had not already fled were forcibly evacuated on September 20 as the city became an armed camp for Sherman's army. On November 14, with his army rested and re-supplied, Sherman ordered the city burned and, the next morning, set out on his "March to the Sea," determined to "make Georgia howl."
Sherman's campaign and occupation left Atlanta's business district, most of its industrial base, and many residences in ruins. By some estimates, two-thirds of the city's buildings were destroyed when the Union army departed in November 1864, and hardship followed for many residents. Yet even before the war ended the following spring, Atlanta was rapidly rebuilding, and by the end of 1865 at least 150 stores were open for business. The city's location at the junction of three of the region's most important railroad lines insured its renaissance, and building on the promise of the railroads, city boosters wasted little time grieving the "Lost Cause." "A new city is springing up with marvelous rapidity," one contemporary observer noted, and many saw a city that was already more northern than southern, both in the pace of civic life and in its faith in industry and commerce. "Atlanta is a devil of a place," one rural visitor wrote, " . . . The men rush about like mad, and keep up such a bustle, worry, and chatter, that it runs me crazy." Removal of the capital from Milledgeville to Atlanta in 1868 confirmed the shift in political and economic power that occurred as a result of the Civil War; and as Savannah and Charleston stagnated, Atlanta boomed.
Atlanta was already looming large over the region, and by 1870 was the fourth-largest inland port for cotton in the Southeast. Its wholesale "drummers" dominated the State's retail supply markets, and with excellent railroad and communication connections, Atlanta was a natural center for banking and commerce of all sorts. Downtown merchants and grocers alone generated more than $35 million in trade annually by the early 1870s, and the opening of the Kimball House hotel in 1872 signaled the growing importance of the city's hospitality industry.
Although Atlanta's population was only 37,500 in 1880, it ranked among the 50 largest cities in the United States and the largest city between Richmond and New Orleans. Henry Grady's campaign for a "New South" of industrial development, regional cooperation, and tolerant race relations was not entirely successful; but much of what he did benefited Atlanta and set the tone for the next 50 years. In 1881, city boosters held the first in a series of "international" expositions to promote the city's textile and industrial development, culminating in the ambitious Cotton States and International Exposition, which drew a million visitors to Piedmont Park in the fall of 1895. Fulton Bag and Cotton Mill, E. Van Winkle Gin and Machine Works, Atlantic Steel, and Ford Motor Company's first Atlanta assembly plant were only the most prominent of dozens of cotton and mercantile warehouses, factories, and textile mills that lined the railroad corridors radiating from downtown.
Atlanta's population rose above 65,000 in 1890, soared to over 150,000 in 1910, and surpassed 200,000 in 1920. By then, the dense redevelopment of much of downtown Atlanta had crowded out most of the old residential buildings, some of which had survived Sherman's fires in 1864, and new construction was replacing them with larger and larger office buildings, hotels, factories, and warehouses. When it was completed in 1892, the South's first "skyscraper," the eight-story Equitable Building, loomed large on the skyline of Atlanta; but by World War I, it was overshadowed by taller buildings, including the English-American, Candler, and Hurt buildings.
In the 1870s and 1880s, mule-drawn and steam-powered streetcar lines as well as commuter train service sparked suburban development, and with electric streetcars fanning growth after 1889, residential real estate became a major industry in the city. Older neighborhoods continued to grow, especially around West End and Grant Park; and the expositions at Piedmont Park in 1887, 1889, and 1895 were a tremendous catalyst for residential development in unincorporated "North Atlanta" along Peachtree Street and Piedmont Avenue north of Ponce de Leon Avenue. In the 1890s and early 1900s, new residential districts emerged as old farms on the outskirts of the city were rapidly carved up into fashionable "garden suburbs." Beginning with Joel Hurt's Inman Park in 1889, streetcars drove suburban development in Ansley Park, Druid Hills, Candler Park, Adair Park, and dozens of others that followed in the first quarter of the 20th century.
Widespread automobile ownership after World War I helped expand Atlanta's suburbs and at the same time brought downtown traffic to a near standstill as automobiles competed with streetcars and pedestrians for a place on the city's crowded streets. By the end of World War I, thriving neighborhood business districts with grocery stores, drugs stores, laundries, and hardware stores had evolved all around the city, most notably around Peachtree and Tenth, Little Five Points, and West End.
With segregation, especially after the 1906 race riots shattered the carefully-crafted veneer of the "New South," Atlanta's black communities coalesced around the famous religious and educational institutions that emerged after the Civil War, including Gammon Theological Seminary southeast of downtown and Atlanta University and the Washington Park neighborhood on the west. By World War I, black-owned businesses, churches, and other institutions prospered and gave support to a community that was, perhaps, better prepared than some to endure and resist the rule of Jim Crow. In May 1917, fire burned across 300 acres of northeast Atlanta, destroying nearly 2,000 buildings and leaving 10,000 people homeless, most of them African Americans in the overcrowded Fourth Ward. The fire accelerated the northward exodus, known as the Great Migration, of the city's African Americans already underway as the burgeoning auto and defense industries in Chicago, Detroit, and other big northern cities offered new economic opportunities and, it was hoped, better living conditions in general.
As the boll weevil ruined the South's agricultural economy after World War I, the great real estate boom in Florida provoked Atlanta, Columbus, and other cities to mount advertising campaigns to stem the flow of investment out of Georgia. In 1926, just months before a hurricane put an end to the Florida boom, the city embarked on its first "Forward Atlanta" campaign that, in three years, generated 20,000 new jobs worth an additional $34.5 million annually to the city's economy.
In addition, the city, urged on by Alderman and later mayor William B. Hartsfield, established a municipal airport on Asa Candler's old motor speedway south of town in 1929; and by the end of 1930, only New York and Chicago had more regularly-scheduled flights than Atlanta's Candler Field. In 1931, the nation's first passenger terminal was constructed at the airport, followed by the nation's first air-traffic control tower in 1938. Now named Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, Atlanta's municipal airport insured that the city would remain a major transportation hub, a position that was reinforced by the three interstate highways that were built through the city after World War II.
As the national economy slid into depression, building activity virtually ceased in Atlanta in the early 1930s. Works Progress Administration and other New Deal programs made possible significant improvements to the city's infrastructure in the last half of the decade, and the city saw a resumption of some private residential development as well as construction of its first civic center, its first downtown park since the 1860s, and the nation's first Federally-funded housing project. In addition to improvements at the municipal airport, the city benefited from construction of the State's first, four-lane, super highway to Marietta in 1938. In the 1930s and 1940s, the city's growth slowed dramatically from the astounding double-digit rates that were typical in previous decades, but with the end of World War II, suburban development skyrocketed.
A comprehensive plan for the city's development was laid out in 1946 and included a major focus on "urban renewal" and on a new system of "expressways" that would eventually be incorporated into the nation's interstate highway system. In 1952, annexation of Buckhead and residential neighborhoods north and west of the city tripled the city's land area and added 100,000 new residents; and although the city's population would peak at just under 500,000 in 1970, there were already a million residents in a five-county metropolitan area by 1960. "The city too busy to hate," as the city's leadership proclaimed in the 1950s, Atlanta would soon be not just a regional powerhouse, but one of the leaders of the "Sun Belt" that rearranged American politics, business, and culture in the late 20th century.
Essay by Tommy Jones, Architectural Historian with the National Park Service's Southeast Regional Office.
African American Experience
he history of African Americans in Atlanta is synonymous with the history of Atlanta itself, and is one of progress and perseverance. From the early days of slaveholding until today, when the last five mayors of Atlanta have been African Americans, the story of the largest southern city can be told through the experiences of its largest ethnic minority.
The majority of African Americans were originally brought over from Western Africa and Madagascar as part of the slave trade between 1760 and 1810. Charleston, South Carolina, became the major southern port where African Americans were introduced to the lower south. By 1750 an estimated 240,000 Africans or people of African descent lived in British North America, comprising nearly 20 percent of the total colonial population, mostly concentrated in the southern colonies. In Georgia and South Carolina the wealthy planters drew upon the skills and knowledge of African Americans brought from Senegambia to aid in the cultivation of rice, which was the first major export crop of these southern colonies. The slave trade from Africa was halted by the U.S. Congress after January 1, 1808, and in the North the gradual abolition of slavery took place. In the South, economic factors, notably the invention of the cotton gin in 1793, kept the institution alive.
The city of Atlanta originated in the 19th century. Starting out as Terminus in 1837, and later named Marthasville in 1843, the rapidly growing town incorporated under the present day name of Atlanta in 1845. Already by 1850, Atlanta had a population which included 493 African slaves, 18 free blacks, and 2,058 whites. This small population would grow, and by 1870, the black population of Atlanta comprised 46 percent of 21,700 residents, a proportion roughly maintained to the end of the 19th century.
The Civil War: The early history of African Americans in Atlanta was forever altered by the Civil War. Georgia banded together with other southern states to create the Confederate States of America, fearing that the election of Abraham Lincoln to the American Presidency in 1860 election would usher in a strong Federal government opposed to slavery. Overall, as Peter Kolchin wrote about African Americans in American Slavery 1619-1877, although "some stood loyally by their masters and mistresses through thick and thin," when Union troops approached, "the transformation of master-slave relations became unmistakable as slaves sensed their impending liberation." General William T. Sherman invaded Georgia from the northwest in May 1864. Later that year he took control of the city of Atlanta and forced evacuation of the citizenry when his armies burned the city before leaving to continue their march to the sea.
Many slaves escaped to follow Sherman's armies. Burke Davis recorded in his book, Sherman's March, that, concerned about the mobility of his army, "Sherman issued orders in Atlanta barring the elderly, the infirm and mothers with young children from joining the march." Under political pressure, Sherman in January of 1865 ordered thousands of acres of abandoned land in the Sea Islands and low country of Georgia and South Carolina to be made available to the freed slaves for homesteading. This order was later rescinded by President Andrew Johnson. Congress, violently opposed to President Johnson, later passed the Southern Homestead Act in 1866, which allowed for homesteading on public lands in five deep southern states, although enforcing this later proved difficult.
Reconstruction in Atlanta: In the spring of 1865 the exhausted Confederacy collapsed and Union control was exerted over the entire South. The Atlanta City Council later that year vowed equal application of laws to whites and blacks, and a school for black children, the first in the city, opened in an old church building on Armstrong Street. In 1867, General John Pope, the U.S. General in charge of Atlanta, issued orders allowing African Americans to serve on juries. In 1868, the State legislature, in defiance of Georgia's Governor Bullock, expelled 28 newly elected African Americans from the legislature. The State Supreme Court reinstated the legislators the following year.
In 1869, the State legislature voted against ratifying the 15th Amendment, which guarantees that the right to vote will not be abridged based on "race, color, or previous condition of servitude." The Federal government returned Atlanta to military rule that December, stating that Georgia would not be readmitted to the Union until the 15th Amendment was passed. The same year a positive step for African Americans was taken when the Methodist Episcopal Church's Freedman Aid Society founded a coeducational school for African American legislators that would later become Clark College in Atlanta. In 1870, the legislature ratified the 15th Amendment and Georgia was readmitted to the Union while the Governor had to fight to keep African-American legislators seated. Dennis Hammond, a Radical Republican, was elected mayor of Atlanta and the first two African Americans, William Finch and George Graham, sat on the new City Council. The era of Reconstruction ended in 1877, when the bulk of the Federal troops were removed from the South and African Americans could no longer rely on their political protection. Still, African Americans found other ways to thrive, both economically and socially. One the best examples of such success was former slave Alonzo F. Herndon, founder of the Atlanta Life Insurance Company, located in the Sweet Auburn Historic District. Through this enterprise, Herndon became Atlanta's first black millionaire.
The 20th Century: At the turn of the 20th century, many of Atlanta's African Americans remained poor and disenfranchised, although after Reconstruction there were political and social theories advocating more equality for African Americans. At the 1895 Cotton States and International Exposition, Tuskegee Institute founder and principal Booker T. Washington delivered his famous Atlanta Compromise Speech which urged African Americans to stress education, economic advancement, and gradual adjustment, rather than immediate political and civil rights. In the time of Jim Crow laws, this caused an uproar and divided African Americans throughout the nation. W.E.B. DuBois, a Morehouse (Atlanta University) professor and political activist, countered that "the radicals received it [Washington's speech] as a complete surrender of the demand for civil and political equality..."
The 20th century also saw the advent of violence in Atlanta as roughly 10,000 white people attacked the city's African Americans on September 22, 1906. "The immediate cause of the terrible Atlanta riot of 1906 had been the newspaper drumfire of alleged assaults upon white women by black men," wrote David Levering Lewis in his Pulitzer prize winning biography, W.E.B. DuBois, Biography of a Race. The deeper reasons for these riots lay in the class conflicts among working white people who feared losing jobs to lesser paid black laborers, as well as a social fear of the rising black middle class. The death count of the Atlanta riots numbered over two dozen slain African Americans and five or six whites. Du Bois responded to the riots with his "Litany of Atlanta" which was published in the Independent on October 11, 1906. Part of his litany reads "A city lay in travail, God our Lord, and from her loins sprang twin Murder and Black Hate." Mayor James Woodward called an assembly of white and African American leaders of Atlanta on the Sunday after the attacks. Promises of police reform were made, as well as the idea for the creation of the Commission on Interracial Cooperation.
Before desegregation took place African Americans created their own opportunities in businesses, publications, and sports. Evidence of successful businesses was most profound in Sweet Auburn, now known as the Sweet Auburn Historic District, a one-mile corridor that served as the downtown of Atlanta's black community. Businesses flourished in the 1930s and 1940s, including restaurants, hotels, and nightclubs where Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington performed. In 1928, the Atlanta Daily World, the oldest African American daily newspaper still in circulation, began publication. From 1920 until the 1940s, the Atlanta Black Crackers, a baseball team in the Negro Southern League, and later on, in the Negro American League, entertained sports fans at Ponce De Leon Park (across from the Ford Factory). Behind all the successes, however, was the daily reality of segregation.
Segregation began as an attempt after the Civil War to disenfranchise African Americans in the South with laws called "Black Codes" and "Jim Crow" laws, which were designed to regulate and limit the opportunities of African Americans. When the legality of these codes was challenged in 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Plessy v. Ferguson , recognized the legality of "separate but equal" laws regarding African Americans and whites. This decision set the precedent throughout the South that "separate" facilities for African Americans and whites were constitutional, provided they were "equal." The "separate but equal" doctrine soon extended to cover many areas of public life, such as restaurants, theaters, and public schools. It was not until 1954, in the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education, that these laws would be struck down.
Many saw the injustice of these "Jim Crow" laws, and in the 20th century, the Civil Rights movement gradually formed in response. Since participation in politics was largely closed to African Americans, Charles Houston and Thurgood Marshall, beginning in the 1920s, decided to train a group of black lawyers who would challenge the laws. The churches in the community played an important role, providing a leadership role for black religious leaders, especially in the South. The church, in the days of slavery and in the segregated South that followed, became a social center for the black community, serving not only as a place of worship but also, according to Taylor Branch in his book, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63, "a bulletin board to a people who owned no organs of communication, a credit union to those without banks, and even a kind of people's court."
When the Civil Rights movement gained momentum, African Americans responded. At the heart of the movement in Atlanta were the students of Atlanta University. Many were involved in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee that was formed in 1960 when the first official meeting was held in Atlanta. One of their first demonstrations was a sit-in at the Rich's department store lunch counter in downtown Atlanta with the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. participating. Born on Auburn Avenue in 1929, Dr. King followed his father's path by preaching at Ebenezer Baptist Church. With his exceptional oratory and motivational skills, the Morehouse graduate emerged as a natural leader in encouraging a nonviolent approach to social change. Largely because of these ideals, Atlanta's road to integration was more peaceful than that of other cities. Still, there were tensions within the black community when negotiations were concluded to end a three-month boycott of 70 downtown white-owned Atlanta stores, which ended in February of 1961. The provision which ended the boycott, signed by 10 of the city's elder black leaders, along with the local chamber of commerce, was written in vague guarantees largely obscure to demands for desegregation. Many of the younger generation denounced the agreement. Tensions escalated at a meeting between the older and younger African Americans at the Warren Methodist Church. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s father was challenged for his position favoring the ending of the boycott. Only the late arrival of his son united the two factions in following the agreement. It was also in Atlanta where King addressed the first major civil rights demonstration in the South since President Kennedy's assassination. On December 15, 1963, King declared segregationa "glaring reality" in Atlanta. Integrated restaurants were still picketed at this time in the city, with some visible opposition. Today the life of this civil rights leader is celebrated at the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site.
After the Civil Rights Act became law in 1965, a new generation of leaders rose who bridged the gap between the Civil Rights movement and the entrance to local and national politics. The political power of African Americans in Georgia rose and the election of civil rights veterans Andrew Young and John Lewis to Congress was a reflection of that gain. Beginning with Maynard Jackson in 1974, the mayors of Atlanta have all since been African Americans, including current mayor Shirley Franklin, who upon her election in 2001, became the first black female mayor of a major southern city. Reflecting on African Americans in Atlanta, Atlanta Journal-Constitution staff writer Mae Gentry wrote, "Still, Atlanta is a place where African Americans feel comfortable, a place where they have a stake in events, a place they can call home." The story of Atlanta is still being told, and now more than ever, African Americans are an integral part of the tale.
Some information found in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution article, "African-Americans: 1.2 million Residents Make Mark on Area," by staffwriter Mae Gentry, printed in 2002 and reprinted with permission.
The following books were helpful for this essay: 1. Branch, Taylor. Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63. New York: Simon and Shuster. 1988.
2. Branch, Taylor. Pillar of Fire: America in the King years 1963-65. New York: Simon and Shuster. 1998.
3. Davis, Burke. Sherman's March. New York: Vintage Books, 1980.
4. Kolchin, Peter. American Slavery 1619-1877. New York: Hill and Wang.1988.
5. Lewis, David Levering. W.E.B. Du Bois Biography of a Race 1868-1919. New York: Henry Holt and Co. 1993.
Information on Georgia in the Civil War was found online at http://www.cherokeerose.com/. Information on Andrew Young was found at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress at http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay. Information on George Henry White was found at http://afroamhistory.about.com and an article on African-American History found at http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/refpages proved useful. Some of the information on African languages was found in the Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition, 2001
Growth and Preservation
Atlanta has long been glibly characterized as a city without historic architecture--"Sherman burned it all, you know." Besides ignoring the "brave and beautiful city" that Henry Grady and his New South compatriots championed after the Civil War, that comment also forgets that some of the city's most distinguished antebellum architecture was destroyed long after the war, including the original county courthouse and the city's downtown churches, all of which had been torn down and rebuilt by the 1890s. Numerous examples of antebellum residential architecture also survived into the 20th century around the fringes of downtown, although none survived past mid-century. The Leyden House, one of the few high style Greek Revival houses built in the city, was demolished by real estate speculators in 1913. The Italianate Neal Mansion, which Sherman used as his headquarters during the Federal occupation in 1864, was demolished in 1927 for construction of a new city hall. And the city's first two-story house, which dated to the earliest days of the city in the 1840s, was torn down in the late 1930s for a warehouse.
Still, Atlanta was not without a regard for its history; and following a pattern that was fairly typical, if somewhat slow to develop, a historic preservation movement evolved in the city. In 1913, the Uncle Remus Ladies Memorial Association acquired the Wren's Nest, Joel Chandler Harris' home in West End, and shortly thereafter opened the city's first house museum, which included the carefully preserved bedroom where the famous author had died in 1908. The house has been restored in recent years, except for the bedroom which remains one of the best examples of an unrestored historic interior to be found anywhere.
Popular interest in the Civil War escalated in the early 20th century, and in 1921, the city opened the Cyclorama in Grant Park to exhibit the massive 1886 painting that depicts the Battle of Atlanta. Five years later, as Margaret Mitchell began writing Gone With the Wind, her father and others organized the Atlanta Historical Society, and in the 1930s they carefully documented the antebellum city and the war that destroyed it. The United Daughters of the Confederacy and other organizations began erecting battlefield monuments around the city during the same period, but local landmarks of those battles continued to be lost to neglect and new development.
The pace of destruction quickened dramatically after World War II as dozens of downtown buildings were demolished for parking lots and garages, including the legendary Kimball House hotel, whose demolition in 1959 signaled the beginning of a wave of demolitions that destroyed many of the city's most famous landmarks in the 1960s and 1970s. "Urban renewal" laid waste to hundreds of acres in the city, much of which would lie undeveloped as "white flight" and general disinvestment sapped the city's vitality and diminished its tax base. Freeway construction, too, which began in the late 1940s, brought three major highways through the heart of the city and destroyed hundreds of businesses and residences in the process.
The success of the Historic Savannah Foundation, which was organized in 1955 to successfully oppose demolition of that city's landmarks, had already attracted widespread attention in the State, and encouraged by passage of the National Historic Preservation Act in 1966, similar organizations sprang up in Augusta, Macon, Columbus, and Thomasville in the mid-1960s. Although Atlanta had no similar voice for preservation until 1980, interest in preserving the city's past was slowly emerging in the 1960s. In 1966, the city established a 15-member Civic Design Commission, consisting of appointed experts in architecture, painting, sculpture, engineering, and planning along with three lay representatives. By the end of the year, the Commission had begun a campaign "to clean up . . . and restore" what would soon be christened "Underground Atlanta." Created by the series of viaducts that the city built to bridge the downtown railroad "gulch" between 1890 and 1930, the area contained some of the city's oldest surviving commercial buildings, and by 1969 it was a thriving entertainment district.
Another facet of the growing interest in the city's heritage was the Atlanta Historical Society's acquisition of the Swan House in Buckhead as its new headquarters, and two years later its relocation of the antebellum Tullie Smith house to the property as the centerpiece of a recreated vernacular homestead. In addition, a handful of "urban pioneers" who had rediscovered Inman Park, the city's first suburban development in 1889, organized Inman Park Restoration (IPR) in 1970 and, the following spring, held their first annual spring festival and tour of homes. While Druid Hills has benefited from a civic association since 1938, IPR was the first of several such organizations that emerged in neighborhoods around downtown to promote preservation and revitalization of some of the city's most threatened historic residential districts.
As the city began to lose population and crime rates soared, Underground Atlanta struggled to survive in the mid-1970s, and when construction of the city's new heavy-rail transit system demolished some of downtown's most important buildings in 1975, Underground Atlantawithered away. By then, the city's major passenger depots had both been torn down as had most of its old hotels and theaters and many of its early skyscrapers. Parts of the landmark Equitable Building, designed by Burnham and Root in 1890, were salvaged and repurposed as outdoor sculpture, and the entire facade of the Paramount Theater, designed by Hentz, Reid, and Adler in 1922, was re-erected as part of a private residence in south Georgia. Otherwise, Atlanta's historic architecture was consigned to the landfills.
In 1974, the "fabulous Fox" became an endangered property, and it was soon reported that Atlanta's largest and grandest theater would be razed for a new high-rise corporate headquarters. Uncharacteristically for Atlanta, a grass-roots campaign to "Save the Fox" quickly emerged, championed by a group of local high school students who picketed in front of the Fox and attracted critical media attention. Aided by the mayor, the city's Urban Design Commission, and a new non-profit organization, Atlanta Landmarks, Inc., the campaign succeeded. In 1975, the Urban Design Commission, with grants from the State Historic Preservation Office, conducted the city's first survey of historic resources and began administration of the city's first historic preservation ordinances. The Atlanta Preservation Center, a private, non-profit organization founded in 1980, assisted the Commission with an expanded survey in 1981, but not until passage of a new, comprehensive historic preservation ordinance in 1989 did the city have the tools it needed to preserve what remained of the city's architectural heritage. In addition to more than 130 National Register properties, the city now has more than 50 landmark buildings and a dozen historic districts which are protected by local ordinance.
Essay by Tommy Jones, Architectural Historian with the National Park Service's Southeast Regional Office.
List of Sites
| Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park | Grady Hospital |
| Brookhaven Historic District | Shrine of the Immaculate Conception |
| Tullie Smith House | Georgia State Capitol |
| Swan House | Central Presbyterian Church |
| Garden Hills Historic District | Atlanta City Hall |
| Henry B. Tompkins House | Underground Atlanta Historic District |
| Brookwood Hills Historic District | |
| Peachtree Southern Railway | Hotel Row Historic District |
| The Temple | Castleberry Hill Historic District |
| Rhodes Memorial Hall | Atlanta University Center District |
| E. Van Winkle Gin and Machine Works | |
| Howell Station Historic District | Herndon Home |
| Ansley Park Historic District | Washington Park Historic District |
| | Booker T. Washington High School |
| Piedmont Park | Mozley Park Historic District |
| Dr. Marion Luther Brittain, Sr., House | West End Historic District |
| Crescent Apartments (Margaret Mitchell House) | |
| Academy of Medicine | Adair Park Historic District |
| Atlanta Biltmore Hotel and Biltmore Apartments | Staff Row and Old Post Area--Fort McPherson |
| William P. Nicolson House | Utoy Cemetery |
| Judge William Wilson House | |
| St. Mark Methodist Church | Burns Cottage |
| Edward C. Peters House | Grant Park Historic District |
| Fox Theatre Historic District | Atlanta Stockade |
| | Oakland Cemetery |
| Georgia Institute of Technology Historic District | Cabbagetown District |
| Atlanta Spring and Bed Company--Block Candy Company | Martin Luther King, Jr., National Historic Site |
| Imperial Hotel | Sweet Auburn Historic District |
| Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus | Inman Park |
| Candler Building | Inman Park--Moreland Historic District |
| Fairlie--Poplar Historic District | National Nugrape Company |
| | Ford Motor Company Assembly Plant |
| | Callanwolde |
| Hurt Building | Druid Hills Historic District |
| Dixie Coca-Cola Bottling Company Plant | Emory University District |
| Coca-Cola Building Annex | Stone Mountain Historic District |
Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park
Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park is situated on granite hills covered with conifer and hardwood forests and streams located northwest of downtown Atlanta. The 2,884-acre park preserves a Civil War battleground of the Atlanta Campaign, during which General William T. Sherman captured Atlanta. Kennesaw Mountain was the last major natural obstacle which the Confederate Army fortified to protect Atlanta from the Union Army's advance at the end of June 1864. Fighting occurred here from June 18, 1864, until July 2, 1864. Sherman's army consisted of 100,00 men, 254 guns and 35,000 horses while Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston had an army of 50,000 men and 187 guns. The Confederates lost 800 soliders killed during the campaign compared to 3,000 Union soldiers, while over 63,000 more soldiers were wounded or captured.
Although these battles were Confederate victories, General Sherman's flanking movements in the following days caused the Confederate troops to withdraw to the safety of defenses ringing Atlanta on July 2. Union forces later surrounded Atlanta and a series of Confederate attacks to break the Federal siege ended in defeat, causing the evacuation of Atlanta. The city was surrendered to Sherman on September 2. Atlanta's capture helped President Abraham Lincoln win re-election and crippled the South's ability to continue fighting against the Union. There are three battlefield areas at the park--the main site is located at Cheatham Hill, the other two are in front of the Visitor Center and off Burnt Hickory Road. While walking some of the 17.3 miles of interpretive walking trails visitors encounter historic earthworks, cannon emplacements and various interpretive signs. There are three monuments representing groups that fought here.
Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park, administered by the National Park Service, is located three miles northwest of Marietta, Georgia. Take the 269 exit from I-75, and take Barrett Pkwy. west for approximately three miles and turn left at Old Hwy. 41. Turn right at Stilesboro Rd, the visitor center is on the left and open 8:30am to 5:00pm daily, closed Christmas. Weekend during daylight savings time the visitor center is open until 6:00pm. The park is open from dawn to dusk; there is no fee for admission. Call 770-427-4686 or visit www.nps.gov/kemo for more information.
Brookhaven Historic District
Developed in 1910, the Brookhaven Historic District is the oldest planned golf course and country club residential community in Georgia. It consists of three separately platted subdivisions with similar street patterns, houses and landscape features that merged together to create one homogeneous residential neighborhood in northeast Atlanta. At the core of the community is a historic golf course featuring a lake, wooded areas, and the Capital City Clubhouse. The clubhouse was originally built for the Brookhaven Country Club but was purchased by the Capital City Club since most of its members lived in the neighborhood. The houses in the district reflect a continuous and consistent development from 1910 to 1941, by which time a majority of the housing in Brookhaven was completed. Brookhaven was developed from the property of Isham Stovall and Soloman Goodwin, two early landowners in the area. Brookhaven Estates, which included the country club property, was the first subdivision to be platted in 1910. Country Club Estates was laid out in 1929 and the Carleton Operating Company land was platted in 1936. The vast majority of these latter areas were built between the Great Depression and 1942.
Houses include one and two-story buildings finished in wood, brick, stucco, and stone. Most of the houses are designed in Colonial or Georgian Revival styles. They typically have three or five bays, gable hipped roofs, weatherboard or brick exteriors, and front entrances highlighted by a frontispiece doorway, a small portico, or a doorway trimmed with sidelights or over lights. Each lot is richly landscaped with pines and other shade trees, shrubs, ground covers and grass lawns.
Brookhaven Historic District is located in NE Atlanta, and roughly bounded by Peachtree Rd. on the south and east, Peachtree Dunwoody Rd. on the west, and Windsor Pkwy. on the north. The houses in the district are private residences and are not open to the public.
Tullie Smith House
The Tullie Smith House is a typical early Georgia plantation house, the form and details of which are known as the "plantation plain" style. The Smith House contains many characteristic architectural features of this type including weatherboard siding, simple gable roof, masonry chimney, and interior walls sheathed with matching boarding, simple window trim and doors. The house was built c. 1840 by Robert Smith, who migrated from Rutherford County, North Carolina, by 1830 and settled in DeKalb County, Georgia. Smith was a yeoman farmer who owned 11 slaves and cultivated approximately 200 of his 800 acres of land, while his cattle and hogs ranged freely nearby. Yeoman farms, such as the Smith's, were more common in Georgia than the large plantations many people associate with the Deep South. Smith's great-great-granddaughter, Tullie, was the last member of the family to occupy the property. The two-story house has an attached rear section with a shed roof. The front facade was altered on the first floor level around 1885 when the original front porch was replaced by a full-length shed porch and "traveler's room."
The original first floor plan was altered c. 1875, but it has been restored. There are two front rooms with a steep stair that rises from the right front room, and two smaller rooms under a shed roof addition to the rear of the house. The second floor has two rooms. There are three original mantels, two in the front rooms on the first floor, and one in the left room on the second floor. The original detached kitchen is directly behind the house--one large chimney composed of stone and brick is still used for cooking.
By the late 1960s, Atlanta's highways and executive park developments mushroomed around this house, located on a hill, until it was isolated. Heirs offered to donate the house and kitchen outbuilding to the Atlanta Historical Society (now the Atlanta History Center), and an Atlanta banker provided the money needed for their relocation in 1969 and restoration in the early 1970s. The Tullie Smith House is a rare example of the plantation plain style that has been restored and operated for educational purposes.
The Tullie Smith House is located at 130 West Paces Ferry Rd. in NW Atlanta. It is owned and maintained by the Atlanta History Center. Costumed interpreters lead 30-minute tours of the house from 11:15am (1:15pm on Sundays) until 4:15pm; there is a fee for admission. Call 404-814-4000 or visit their website for more information.
Swan House
The Swan House is an excellent example of the Second Renaissance Revival style and represents the architectural and decorative tastes of affluent citizens in the late 1920s. Built by Edward and Emily Inman, heirs to a cotton brokerage fortune, the house was designed by well-known Atlanta architect Philip Trammell Schutze in 1928 and decorated by Ruby Ross Woods of New York. Swan House and its gardens are together considered Shutze's finest residential work, in which he adapted Italian and English classical styles to accommodate 20th-century living. The house is set on a rising slope and presents an Italian Mannerist facade complete with double stairs descending on either side of a cascade. Baroque inspired lawns, stone obelisks and retaining walls, and two stone fountains are other Renaissance elements found on the grounds.
The name of the house is drawn from the swan or bird motifs that grace many of the interior rooms. The interior of the house is as elaborate as the exterior and features five rooms of distinction: the entrance vestibule, the entrance hall, the library, the Morning Room and the Dining Room. Other rooms include four bedroom areas, a sitting room, a full basement and an apartment in the attic. Of the two impressive exterior facades of Swan House, the west facade facing Andrews Drive that is the rear of the house is the more impressive of the two, being strictly Italian in derivation, although not imitative of any one architectural monument of the past. Symmetrical in every way, the facade has a central doorway at the top of a double winding staircase. Heavily framed, the door is topped by a segmented pediment supported on scroll brackets with sculptural decoration at its apex. The east facade serves as the main entrance and is English Palladian in origin. With its four-columned portico, it reflects the characteristic severity of the main entrances to this style of house. In 1966, the Atlanta Historical Society purchased the Swan House and most of its original furnishings, which range from 18th-century antiques to 20th-century objects. The house opened to the public in 1967.
The Swan House is located at 130 West Paces Ferry Rd. in NW Atlanta. It is owned and maintained by the Atlanta History Center. Tours are generally available daily from 11:00am (1:00pm on Sundays) until 4:00pm, although during the current renovation of the interior, these times are subject to change. Please call 404-814-4000 or visit http://www.atlhist.org/ to obtain the most up-to-date tour information.
Garden Hills Historic District
The Garden Hills Historic District is an early 20th-century planned residential neighborhood located five miles north of the central business district of Atlanta. The roots of this planned community came from the growing use of private automobiles after WWI, allowing citizens to live further away from where they worked. In addition to single-family residences, the district also includes apartment buildings, a church, a historic commercial area, two schools and businesses that lead to a fairly self-contained community.
The original plan for the neighborhood was developed by the Garden Hills Company, a real estate firm founded in 1925 by Philip C. McDuffie, a lawyer and real estate entrepreneur. A natural ravine divides the original plat from a similar development created at the same time as the original Garden Hills section. Slated to be called the Beverly Hills Subdivision, this development merged with Garden Hills. It includes land used for two of the neighborhood's institutional landmarks: North Fulton High School and Garden Hills Elementary School. By 1926, the area of development had been expanded considerably and consisted of three sections stretching from Peachtree Road to Piedmont Road. These three sections, which comprise the historic district, are the original Peachtree Road section, a centrally located Country Club section, and the Brentwood section.
Garden Hills has consistently been a stable, upper-income residential neighborhood of single-family homes with a mix of compatibly scaled apartments. Houses within the interior of the district are typically set back approximately 20 feet on lot sizes of 70 by 80 feet. Corner lots are somewhat larger. The houses are one- or two-story brick veneer or frame dwellings. The predominant architectural styles include Tudor and Colonial Revival styles. Most are of a very high degree of craftsmanship, reflecting the upper-middle income families for whom the original development was intended.
Garden Hills Historic District is located in NE Atlanta, and is roughly bounded by Delmont, Brentwood, and N. Hills Drs., Piedmont, E. Wesley and Peachtree Rds. The houses in the district are private residences and are not open to the public.
Henry B. Tompkins House
The Henry B. Tompkins House and its landscaped gardens are an outstanding example of the work of Neel Reid, one of the most respected early 20th-century Atlanta architects. Totally unaltered in design and plan since its construction in 1922, the house is one of the most complete remaining examples of a Reid villa. Reid studied at the acclaimed Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris and returned to Atlanta to open the noted Atlanta architectural firm of Heintz, Reid, and Adler. His work can be seen throughout the residential neighborhoods of suburban Atlanta. In the Tompkins House, Reid's mastery of scale and ability to create controlled dimensions and open space with a small volume are evident. The house reflects both the freedom with which he used elements to maintain a consistently formal tone throughout and the skill with which he provided for the practical needs of the relatively affluent lifestyles of his clients.
The design of the house was adopted from a Georgian house in Chichester, England. Its exterior is built of natural limestone and its composition is basically a hipped roof capping a center block with flanking wings. The facade of the two-story building contains little ornamentation, but is accentuated with a stone stringcourse delineating the first floor from the second, stone strip pilasters that frame the corners of the house, and a pedimented central pavilion framing the entrance. This main entrance is over scaled to make it the focal point of the house. Framed with rusticated pilasters and crowned with a broken segmental pediment and ornate cartouche, the doorway is Italianate in style. The interior is composed of a round entrance hall, rectangular stairwell and octagonal library. This central axis forms a varied geometric plan. The entrance hall, with its domed ceiling and four rounded niches alternating with its four doors, repeats the geometric pattern. The formal garden completes the villa style of the house. It is cut into the hill, walled with granite from nearby Stone Mountain, and paved in part with brick. The three granite walled sides of the garden when coupled with the house creates an intimate and private atmosphere.
The Henry B. Tompkins House is located at 125 W. Wesley Rd, in NW Atlanta. It is a private residence and not open to the public.
Brookwood Hills Historic District
Brookwood Hills is a well-defined residential area that incorporates the major architectural, landscape and planning elements of suburban development of the early 1920s. In 1912, Benjamin F. Burdett and a partner had purchased approximately 50 acres of land from the A.J. Collier estate. Early in the 1920s Burdette joined George Washington Collier, Jr., who owned some 25 acres directly south of the Burdette holdings, to jointly develop 65 acres as a suburban subdivision called Brookwood Hills. Brookwood Hills was developed in a series of phases over a period of years. Phase I included the development of Huntington Road, Palisades Road, Woodcrest Avenue and Northwood Avenue. The area was substantially developed and homes sold by 1924. Civil engineer O.F. Kauffman, who previously worked for the Druid Hills Company planning its suburban community, drew the plat for the subdivision. The curvilinear design for Brookwood Hills clearly reveals the influence of Frederick Law Olmstead's principles, although on a reduced scale, with whom Kauffman worked on the development of Druid Hills. The second phase of development at Brookwood Hills proceeded from 1924 to 1930. Development occurred along Wakefield Drive, Camden Road, Brighton Road and the northern portion of Palisades from Huntington Road to Wakefield Drive. Overall, the historic district encompasses approximately 90 acres and includes more than 250 residences, a large recreation area and two distinctive bricked and landscaped entranceways to the subdivision.
The general development density in the first phase of construction provided an air of urbanity amidst the semi-rural setting. Building lots in Phase II were primarily rectangular in shape, and all the homes in this section give the impression of facing inward toward the middle, or center, of the subdivision. The residences of Brookwood Hills are diverse in style, scale and building materials, and reflect a full range of early 20th-century architecture. Eclectic styles and elements are represented by Tudor, Colonial, Neoclassical, Bungalow, and Cottage styles. A variety of building materials, clapboard, brick, stone, clay roof, and slate roofing add to the architectural diversity. This diversity of stylistic expression is furthered by the range of scale in the residences--varying from one-story bungalows and cottages to two-and three-story spacious Colonial and Tudor mansions.
Brookwood Hills Historic District, east of Peachtree Rd., is roughly bounded by Huntington Rd. to the south and east, Northwood Ave. and Montclair Dr. on the west, and Brighton Rd. to the north. The houses in the district are private residences and are not open to the public. Visit www.brookwoodhills.com for information on community events.
Peachtree Southern Railway
Peachtree Southern Railway, now known as Brookwood Station, is the last passenger terminal in Atlanta, a city which owes its existence to railroads. Representing a fine example of a suburban railroad terminal, it is the work of the eminent Atlanta architectural firm of Hentz, Reid, and Adler. Opening in 1918, the station originally serviced 14 arriving trains and seven departing trains on a daily basis. Today, however, only a few passenger trains run primarily to New Orleans, Louisiana, and Washington, D.C.
The architects conceived the railroad terminal as an Italian Renaissance pavilion. The east facade is composed of three bays and separated by four wide, brick pilasters with limestone bases. The pilasters are connected by a molded entablature. Flush with the brick facade, the entablature is finished in sections and etched with the name of the station over the bays. Palladian windows and entranceways can be found on every facade except for the rear, or west, facade. The west facade includes an attachment to the rectangular building that includes clerks' offices and a sheltered porch area.
The interior of the station is simple in terms of its layout and its design. There are two waiting rooms that constitute the main block of the building. Both rooms contain wooden benches with curved backs. A short brass rail divides the ticket window from the main waiting room. A door to the left of the ticket window opens to the rear porch and to the stairs that lead to the railroad concourse below.
Peachtree Southern Railway, now Brookwood Station, is located at 1688 Peachtree St. in north Atlanta. It is open daily as an Amtrak passenger station. Call 1-800-872-7245 for more information on the station and its schedule.
The Temple
The Temple has served as a center for Atlanta's Jewish cultural, educational and social activities since its construction in 1931. It is the home of the city's oldest Jewish congregation--the Hebrew Benevolent Society, established in 1860 to serve the needs of the local German-Jewish immigrants. Operating from various rented rooms and halls, the congregation built its first permanent synagogue in 1875 in downtown Atlanta. Twice, first in 1902 and again in 1930, overcrowded facilities prompted the Reform Judaism congregation to build a new home. At the time of its construction, the current Temple was one of only a few synagogues in the state, which in 1926 had only 22 Jewish congregations and 13 synagogues. During the era of the Civil Rights struggle in the South, the Temple's rabbi, Jacob Rothschild, became an outspoken supporter of equality for all of Atlanta's citizens. On October 12, 1958, white supremacists bombed the northern side of the Temple in response to the rabbi's support of the Civil Rights movement. Although arrests were made, no one was ever convicted of the bombing. While Rabbi Rothschild's commitment to social justice angered some, many more were outraged at the bombing. An outpouring of support came from around the world to help reconstruct the damaged portions of the Temple.
The Temple is a fine example of a classically inspired religious building and the design is particularly noteworthy for its elaborate interior decorative scheme worked out by the architect in consultation with the Temple's rabbi to combine classical motifs with Jewish iconography. It was designed by Philip T. Shutze, an important early 20th-century Atlanta architect. Shutze was considered a master of classically inspired design and was also responsible for Swan House and the Academy of Medicine. The well-proportioned building features a pedimented portico, Ionic columns, drum dome and vaulted and domed sanctuary. Its finishing details include terrazzo floors, black marbleized-wood columns and gilded woodwork. Of particular note is the intricate plaster relief work on the interior of the sanctuary's frieze, cornice, vaults and dome. The focal point of the central altar area is the Ark--made of carved gilded wood. Above this hangs one of four red globes, the Eternal Light, brought from the first temple of the congregation built in 1875. This globe is suspended from a gilded eagle on the ceiling that represents the Great Seal of the United States and symbolizes Jewish freedom in America.
The Temple is located at 1589 Peachtree St. in north Atlanta. It is open to the public during normal worship services. Call 404-873-1731 or visit www.the-temple.org for more information.
Rhodes Memorial Hall
Rhodes Memorial Hall was originally the home of furniture magnate Amos Giles Rhodes. This 1904 Romanesque Revival building was inspired by the Rhineland castles Amos Rhodes admired on a trip to Europe in the late 1890s. Rhodes was born in Kentucky in 1850, and married Amanda Wilmot Dougherty of Atlanta in 1876. He shortly started his furniture business that he continued until his death in 1928. Rhodes' business eventually had outlets in 35 cities throughout the Southeast. He was one of Atlanta's wealthiest citizens when this home was constructed. The house is Georgia's best example of the Romanesque Revival style. Rhodes hired architect Willis F. Denny II, who created a unusual Romanesque Revival house taken from original medieval Romanesque sources, infused with more fashionable Victorian elements, and adapted for use as an early 20th-century house.
Rhodes Hall reflects a time when Peachtree Street was a fashionable residential area, lined with large residences. Locally quarried Stone Mountain granite forms the towers, turrets, and battlements of Rhodes' castle. The building has one of Atlanta's finest existing Victorian interiors--ornate woodwork, murals, intricate parquet floors, colorful mosaics, and exquisite stained glass windows highlight the curving grand staircase. The house was wired for electricity when it was built, and the more than 300 light bulbs that lit the house reflect the fascination that new technology held for Atlantans at the turn of the century. The house also included electric call buttons in most rooms, as well as a security system.
Today Rhodes Hall is surrounded by commercial buildings and heavy traffic, yet it maintains its serenity and elegance. After the death of Rhodes and his wife, their children deeded the house to the State of Georgia, with a restriction that it be used for "historic purposes." To that end, the home is used as a house museum and the offices of the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation.
Rhodes Memorial Hall is located at 1516 Peachtree St., NW in Atlanta. The ground floor is a museum open Monday-Friday, 11:00am to 4:00pm, and Sundays from 12:00pm to 3:00pm; there is a fee for tours. For more information, call 404-885-7800 or visit the website for the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation.
E. Van Winkle Gin and Machine Works
One of the largest cotton-related industrial sites in the South, the E. Van Winkle Gin and Machine Works is a complex of industrial buildings on an 11-acre site serviced by three separate rail lines in northwest Atlanta. Built between the early 1880s and the early 1930s, it is an intact late 19th-century manufacturing plant (with some modernizations) that remains an ongoing enterprise. Edward Van Winkle opened his third industrial complex in Atlanta in 1889. Nine years later, he specialized solely in cotton-related machinery, winning numerous awards at international expositions and state fairs. During this time, his was one of only three cotton-gin manufacturers in Atlanta and the only cotton-seed-oil mill producer in the state.For the most part, the complex consists of one-, two- and three-story red brick buildings with load bearing masonry exterior walls and timber and plank interiors. A small number of cast-iron structural elements are employed. Industrial in character, the machine works were the result of engineering principles applied to problems of design and construction, yet the cross-axial layout of the hierarchical arrangement of the buildings reflects period Beaux Arts principles of composition. They are highlighted by subtle details that reveal attention to aesthetics as well as utility; these details include corbelled and dentilled cornices and parapets, articulated segmental arches over windows and doorways and accentuated brick bonding patterns.
In 1912, the Murray Company of Texas bought Van Winkle out and changed the name of the plant. During World War II, the complex was used to produce ammunition and mortars for the war effort. After several ownership changes, varied industrial shops opened their businesses in the former cotton gin manufacturing complex. The continuity of activity has prevented its disuse, decay and demolition. With interpretation provided by available documentation, the entire process of manufacturing cotton-ginning equipment can be traced through the complex as it stands today. The complex also makes an interesting and emphatic statement about the late 19th-century outlook on transportation as it was principally oriented toward the railroad and not the highway.
The E. Van Winkle Gin and Machine Works is located at 1200 Foster St. in NW Atlanta. It contains several commercial shops which are open to the public during normal business hours.
Howell Station Historic District
The Howell Station Historic District is located northwest of downtown Atlanta in an area dominated by light industry associated with the development of Marietta Street. The district consists of intact residential buildings, a recreational park, and four churches in a historically blue-collar neighborhood. Almost all of the built environment here constructed before the Civil War, including plantation and farm houses, was destroyed during General William T. Sherman's March to the Sea in 1864. Interest in the area was renewed when real estate developers in the 1890s laid out a grid pattern and subdivided the land into lots. The types of residential buildings located within the neighborhood include Shotgun, Georgian cottage, Bungalow, Queen Anne cottage and Hall-Parlor.The neighborhood developed historically with both whites and African Americans living in segregated areas of the neighborhood. Much of the historically black section of the neighborhood has unfortunately been lost due to the expansion of the Mead Packaging Corporation, east of the district, and the Fulton County Jail, south of the district. The remaining historically black section is characterized by narrow lots and vernacular houses with minimal stylistic elements. The rest of the neighborhood is characterized by larger lots with the houses situated close to the street and uniformly set back. The houses reflect Craftsman and Folk Victorian styles.
Historically, a row of commercial buildings fronted West Marietta Street, although few remain intact or retain integrity today. The commercial area consisted of two groceries, one meat market, a barber, and a hotel. The neighborhood also had one school, Goldsmith School, for white students, while black students had to leave the neighborhood to attend English Avenue School or Booker T. Washington High School. Knight Park, located in the northwest section of the neighborhood, is an open recreational space with sloping hills and mature trees. A community building built in 1945 is located within the park and is used for storage. The setting outside the neighborhood is dominated by light industry because of nearby Southern Railway (now Norfolk Southern). The remaining commercial stores not on West Marietta Street serve as a transition between the neighborhood and the industries.
The Howell Station Historic District is generally bounded by W. Marietta, Rice, Baylor and Herndon Sts., Niles Cir. and Longley Ave. The houses in the district are private residences and are not open to the public.
Ansley Park Historic District
Ansley Park Historic District is an early 20th-century suburban residential district that was developed in four phases between 1904 and 1913. It is located north of downtown Atlanta and west of Piedmont Park, between Piedmont Avenue and Peachtree Street. Completed by 1930, the neighborhood encompasses approximately 275 acres and includes single-family residences, apartments, and a church. It features a curvilinear arrangement of streets, numerous parks, and a wide range of eclectic and period architectural styles. Streets in the district are landscaped on either side like parkways. Carefully aligned curbs, smooth lawns, shrubs and trees border the streets through the Park. This streetscape blends with the landscaping of adjoining lots to create the appearance of a vast public park. The principal parks of the district are Winn Park and McClatchy Park. Both wind their ways through major parts of the suburb so that no residential lot is more than a 10-minute walk away. The Ansley Park golf course is situated along the banks of Clear Creek within the neighborhood.
Diverse in style and scale, the houses in the district represent a full range of eclectic and contemporary suburban architecture. These styles include Colonial, Federal, Neo-Classical, Italian Renaissance, Queen Anne, and Tudor styles, as well as Prairie School and Craftsmen bungalows. As for scale, houses range from one-story cottages to two-story houses to three-story mansions and larger apartment buildings. The grander buildings are mostly situated on the larger lots along primary streets, at major intersections or overlooking parks. Smaller houses are located on narrow lots along secondary streets. The single exception to the residential architecture is the First Church of Christ Scientist building at the corner of Peachtree and Fifteenth streets. Built in 1913, the church is a centrally planned Neo-Classical building with a pedimented Corinthian portico. Today, Ansley Park continues to be a middle- to upper-class neighborhood in Midtown Atlanta.
The Ansley Park Historic District is located in mid-town Atlanta and west of Piedmont Park, between Piedmont Ave. and Peachtree St. The houses in the district are private residences and are not open to the public, but there is more information and a virtual tour available through the Ansley Park Civic Association . Twilight walking tours available April-October. Visit The Atlanta Preservation Center for more information.
Habersham Memorial Hall
Habersham Memorial Hall, the chapter house for the Joseph Habersham Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, is a 20th-century building modeled after the circa 1819 Bulloch-Habersham House in Savannah, Georgia, designed by William Jay. The Hall is located near Piedmont Park in the neighborhood of Ansley Park . While the exterior of the Hall is a replica of the Savannah home, the interior was designed not for residential living, but for the purpose of meetings and entertainment. It was designed in 1921 by New York architect Henry Hornbostel, who was responsible for several other Atlanta buildings including Callanwolde and the campus plan for Emory University. Hornbostel's design for Habersham Memorial Hall is a fine example of the Regency style of William Jay, adapted in form and use for the 20th century.Built in 1921, this two-story, hipped roof, brick-stuccoed building has a semi-circular portico. The two-story hexastyle portico has stuccoed columns with composite order capitals and a semi-conical roof that appears to fit into a central gable in the hip roof. The capitals are detailed with spread eagles and acanthus leaves. The first floor doors open out onto a brick paved terrace, level with the portico but above ground level. The second-story window and door openings are protected by cast iron railings and detailed with the initials, "JHC," representing the Joseph Habersham Chapter. The interior features a central hall, off of which are identical rooms, and a smaller stair hall that leads to the kitchen and a stairway. On the front facade are French doors which open out onto the terrace. The ceiling has open beam work with a deep beaded cornice. A vast assembly room comprises most of the second floor.
Habersham Memorial Hall is located at 240 15th St. It is not open to the public.
Piedmont Park
A roughly triangular-shaped area of 185 acres, Piedmont Park contains several auxiliary structures including the stone Jacobethan Style Piedmont Driving Club, elevated brick bandstand, and round columned domed gazebo. The grounds of this park were originally used in the late 19th century as the driving grounds and racetrack of the Gentleman's Driving Club. In 1895, the site was chosen for a fair, the Cotton States and International Exposition. Influential landscape designer Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr., was consulted during the planning of the Exposition and influenced some elements of its plan, although he was unable to complete the project. Olmsted had always maintained that parks were important moral, as well as physical, influences on the lives of urban dwellers. Careful planning and landscaping of the environment, he believed, could favorably affect the health and welfare of society. The exposition ran for exactly 100 days, opening on September 18, 1895 and closing on December 31, 1895.
In 1904, the city of Atlanta purchased the 185 acres for a park and removed the exposition buildings. In 1909, the Olmsted Brothers firm (by then run by Frederick's sons) was hired, and began preparation of a comprehensive plan for the park. Apparently by this point, all of the buildings were gone and the grounds were deteriorated. Only the general outlines and the stone stairways, which had led to the buildings and the lake, remained. The plan, which was submitted the following year, utilized the handsome stone stairways with their tall circular stone urns as access and transition paths between the different levels of the grounds. The plan the brothers created clearly carried out the design ideas of the elder Olmsted. The landscapes and vistas of Piedmont Park, as designed in the early 20th century, largely remain today, and provide much needed green space for the increasingly urbanized neighborhoods surrounding the park. A lake, playground, baseball fields, and acres of grassy hills provide visitors and residents alike a place to relax and enjoy the outdoors.
Piedmont Park is bordered by 10th St., Southern Railway, and Piedmont Rd. It is open to the public 6:00am to 11:00pm daily. For more information visit their website at www.piedmontpark.org/ or call 404-875-7275.
Dr. Marion Luther Brittain, Sr., House
Built for one of Georgia's most renown educators, the Dr. Marion Luther Brittain, Sr., House is a good example of the Neoclassical Revival Style. Dr. Brittain (1866-1953) was State school superintendent from 1910 to 1922. During this time he saw the consolidation of many country school systems and the building of more modern schools in almost every county. In 1922, he became the fourth president of the Georgia Institute of Technology, from which he retired in 1944. The house was built in 1911, and Dr. Brittain and his family lived here until he became president of Georgia Tech, and they moved to the university-owned president's house.
The two-story Neoclassical Revival house features an entrance facade dominated by four Corinthian columns. They support a monumental temple front before the three-bay west facade. The entrance is positioned between large single-pane windows on the first floor that are flanked by sidelights and surmounted by a fixed transom. The exterior siding on the west facade is clapboard, the column shafts and plinths are wooden, and the capitals are plaster. Renovations in 1986 covered the other three facades with vinyl siding. The interior is characterized by a modified central hall plan. The original floor plan included three large rooms adjoining the modified central hall. After the Brittains moved to the Georgia Tech's president's house in 1922, the home was converted into four apartments. The larger rooms east of the front parlors were partitioned and additional balconies were built to flank the original central balcony. An addition of a warehouse was made to the rear of the building in 1965. In 1991, the building was converted to a doctor's office.
The Dr. Marion Luther Brittain, Sr., House and Apartments is located at 1109 W. Peachtree St. in north Atlanta. It is a private office, and not open to the general public.
Crescent Apartments
Built in 1899 for Cornelius Sheehan, member of a prominent Atlanta family and owner of Greer's Almanac, this house was moved in 1913 and converted into 10 apartments. Margaret Mitchell, author of Gone With the Wind, lived in the ground floor Apartment Number 1 from 1925 to 1932 with her husband John Marsh. Mitchell, a former Atlanta Journal reporter, wrote the bulk of her epic novel here between 1926 and 1930, while working at a manual typewriter on a small table in the living-room alcove overlooking Crescent Avenue. In 1932, Mitchell and her husband moved from the declining Crescent Apartments to a nearby apartment on 17th Street at Pershing Point where she finished editing the manuscript for publication. In 1936, the book was published and became an instant success selling more than 180,000 copies in the first month. Film rights were quickly purchased by Selznick International Pictures for a record-breaking price of $50,000. Within six months, more than one million copies had been sold, and Margaret Mitchell was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for 1936. The movie opened in 1939, premiering in Atlanta. Mitchell's novel has been translated into 26 foreign languages and sold approximately 30 million copies worldwide. Revered by many, reviled by some, Gone With the Wind is arguably the most popular and influential book ever written about the American South.
Mitchell characterized her apartment on Crescent Avenue as "The Dump" and as its condition worsened, the house became known by this moniker. The once stylish turn-of-the-century home was eventually boarded up, and in great disrepair. Dedicated preservationists raised funds for its renovation in the 1990s, and opened the house to the public.Crescent Apartments is located at 979 Crescent Ave. in north Atlanta. It is open daily from 9:00am to 4:00pm; there is a fee for admission. Call 404-249-7019 or visit the Margaret Mitchell House and Museum website for more information.
Academy of Medicine
The Academy of Medicine houses the oldest medical society in Atlanta, the Medical Association of Atlanta, and represents the prominence of the medical profession in the city as well as the determination of the society to provide the best medical services and facilities available. The building itself is an excellent example of Neo-Classical architecture. Architect R. Kennon Perry (1890-1954), with the architectural firm of Hentz, Adler, and Shutze, supervised the project, but the design is attributed to one of the firm's partners, Philip T. Shutze. The Academy of Medicine was one of the few non-residential projects of Shutze's career, who was a well-known Atlanta architect responsible for homes such as Swan House.Organized medicine developed in Fulton County in 1854 with the establishment of the Atlanta Medical College and the Brotherhood of Physicians, soon after known as the Atlanta Medical Society. Meetings of the society were suspended during the Civil War, but resumed after 1865, though the society's name changed with several reorganizations over the years. Prior to construction of the Academy of Medicine building in 1941, the medical society held its meetings in various locations. As a central meeting place for the medical society, members used their new home to share ideas and discuss medical techniques and theories. The Academy of Medicine also served as a training center for interns and society members.
Over the past two decades, an emphasis on specialization within the medical profession, and increased access to medical information through hospital libraries and conferences, reduced the demand for use of the building. By the late 1970s, it was in disuse and disrepair. In 1981 the medical society leased the property to Atlanta Medical Heritage, Inc., a non-profit corporation responsible for raising funds and supervising a planned restoration of the building. The restoration, completed in 1983, adapted the building for the leasing of meeting and office space, as well as use of the auditoriums.
The Academy of Medicine is located at 875 W. Peachtree St., in NW Atlanta. It is not regularly open to the public.
Atlanta Biltmore Hotel and Biltmore Apartments
A type of "apartment hotel" popular during the 1920s, the Atlanta Biltmore Hotel and Biltmore Apartments opened in 1924 and was described as the "city's point of contact with the world beyond its own borders." The 11-story hotel and adjacent 10-story apartment building are an excellent example of the grand, modern hotels built across the country during this era. The success of these monumental hotels was fostered by the combination of improved transportation, mass production of inexpensive Ford motor cars, financial speculation based on an attitude of unbounded prosperity, and newly enfranchised middle-class vacationers. William Candler, son of Coca-Cola magnate Asa Candler, was the local financier behind the Biltmore project, purchasing the land for the hotel in 1921 and incorporating the Atlanta Biltmore Hotel Company in conjunction with Holland Ball Judkins and John McEntee Bowman of the New York-based Biltmore hotel chain. Bowman developed several Biltmore Hotels through the country during this time period, all bearing the Biltmore name which was said to be drawn from the Vanderbilt family estate of the same name in North Carolina. The Atlanta Biltmore was designed by the New York firm of Schultze and Weaver, also responsible for the Biltmore hotels in Los Angeles and Havana.
The Atlanta Biltmore was located in an upper-class residential neighborhood, close to downtown but separated from the business district. Both its location and restrained exterior design, with Neo-Georgian detailing, was intended to appeal to the upper-class, and was thought to reflect the refined grace of the New South. The six million dollar hotel opened with great fanfare, and a train was chartered from New York City to bring prominent Northern hotel men to Atlanta for the festivities. A dinner-dance at the hotel that evening was broadcast nationally over the radio, and during the course of the opening weekend, 1,000 cars made the circular sweep through the hotel's gardens and terrace drive. According to one reporter, Biltmore hotels, like that in Atlanta, provided "the background for a ceaseless pageant of human life, and even of human romance, and architecturally it is at its best when it dramatizes the people beneath its roof, when it makes the life and spirit . within its walls transcend the routine and ordinary everyday trend of .existence."
The Atlanta Biltmore, once known as the South's supreme hotel, staged galas, tea dances, debutante balls, and recitals by visiting Metropolitan Opera stars. It served celebrities such as Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Mary Pickford, Bette Davis, and Charles Lindbergh. It was the initial home of the Atlanta Historical Society and the meeting place for many of the city's civic organizations. For more than 30 years, WSB, the South's first radio station, broadcasted from its studios within the hotel and the radio tower on the hotel roof became a landmark on the city skyline. Facing increased competition from Atlanta's modern downtown hotels, it was sold to a series of owners beginning in the 1960s who were unable to revitalize the business. In 1997, a local real estate investment firm, The Novare Group, purchased the Biltmore property and renovated the hotel to offer a variety of uses. In the spring of 1999, the former Biltmore Hotel reopened for the first time in almost 20 years, and currently offers special event space for business and social functions.
The Atlanta Biltmore Hotel and Biltmore Apartments are located at 30 5th St., in NE Atlanta. A portion of the building houses condominiums. For information on booking special events in the Biltmore Ballrooms call 404-962-8700 or visit www.dovemgt.com/biltmore.htm
William P. Nicolson House
This late 19th-century eclectic residence was designed by Atlanta architect Walter T. Downing for Dr. William P. Nicolson in 1892. Dr. Nicolson was a prominent surgeon, Dean and teacher at the College of Physicians and Surgeons in Atlanta, and President of the Georgia Medical Association. Downing, a respected and important Atlanta architect, was the designer of numerous residential, commercial and public buildings in Atlanta. The Nicolson House is only one of five residences designed by Downing known to still exist in Atlanta. It remained in the ownership of the Nicolson family until 1982.The house is a compact two-story suburban home, sited on a restricted lot with moderate front and rear yards in the Midtown area. The visual complexity of the eclectic exterior design results from the application of a decorated, two-story rounded bay projection and columned, flat-roofed porch to the front of a two-story square block house with medium pitched hipped roof. The shell motif, so popular with Downing, permeates the applied carved decoration from the shell pattern in the freely designed Ionic capitals supporting the front porch to the large shell which, as the major visual concentration of the house, adorns the main facade projecting bay. The use of materials on the exterior further expresses the architect's emphasis on varied architectural composition. The main body of the house is clad in clapboard siding with plain corner pilasters, molded caps and plain frieze at the second-story floor level. In contrast, the lower portion of the projecting bay is sheathed in a board and batten siding with a tongue and groove vertical siding on the upper level providing a smooth, plainer surface for the shell, swag and torch details and ornate frieze. The interior features a U-shaped staircase with a large lower landing that is used for a sitting area with a built-in settee. The central hall is spaciously designed to be a major circulation and visual link to the public rooms on the first floor. Its large size is characteristic of the openness of the first floor plan, which emphasized social entertaining. Large single and double recessed sliding paneled doors, opening directly onto the central hall, connect all major first floor rooms.
The William P. Nicolson House is located at 821 Piedmont Ave. in north Atlanta. It is now the Shellmont Inn, a bed and breakfast. Call 404-872-9290 or visit www.shellmont.com for more information.
St. Mark Methodist Church
Built from 1902 to 1903, St. Mark Methodist Church is one of Atlanta's few remaining early 20th-cenutry Gothic style granite churches. Particularly noteworthy are its stained glass windows made with the pot-metal glass technique used in European Gothic churches during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.The main facade has a triple entrance portal beneath a large arched window and front gable. A tall bell tower with arched windows and openings, wall buttresses and steeple dominate the left corner of the facade. The right corner has a narrow polygonal-shaped tower and spire. The north and south facades have a cross gable with rose-shaped window and six arched windows. The interior of the church consists of the sanctuary and later additions of the chapel (1947) and an educational wing (1957). The sanctuary has three rows of pews and an altar and choir at the east end. In 1959 the altar area was enlarged and renovated, and a new organ was installed. The 12 pictorial stained glass windows on the north and south walls were installed between 1909 and 1959. The scheme of the subjects is based on the life of Christ.
St. Mark Methodist Church is located at 781 Peachtree St. in Atlanta. The public is welcome during regularly scheduled services. For more information call 404-873-2636 or visit the church's website.
Edward C. Peters House
Dominating an entire wooded block near the center of downtown, the Edward C. Peters House is the best and earliest surviving example of residential architecture from Atlanta's post-Civil War era. This house is an excellent reminder of those years when Atlanta first became a city of national importance, when Atlanta became the capital of the "New South." Edward C. Peters, son of an Atlanta pioneer Richard Peters, built the house in 1883. The well-preserved two and one-half story red brick mansion is a fine example of high Victorian architecture--featuring both Queen Anne and Shingle Style elements. The architect of the Peters House was Gottfried L. Norrman (1846-1909), a Swede, who practiced in Atlanta from about 1880 until his death. A recent study of Norrman's career reveals that he was not only an important local architect but that his work is of some significance to the general American development of this period. His late work indicates his knowledge of progressive forms and ideas stemming from Chicago School architects such as John Root and Louis Sullivan.The Peters family were among Atlanta's founders and played an important role in the city's development throughout the Civil War, Reconstruction and the late 19th-century rebuilding boom. Richard Peters, son of a well-known Philadelphia family, moved to Georgia in 1835 as an assistant engineer on the newly organized Georgia Railroad. Richard's grandfather, Judge Richard Peters, was Secretary of War during the American Revolution; tiles around the Peters House dining room fireplace depict scenes from the exclusive Philadelphia Fish and Chowder Society founded by Judge Peters. Richard Peters had served an apprenticeship with the noted architect William Strickland, prior to arriving in Georgia. He first visited Atlanta (then called Marthasville) in 1844 and in 1846 moved here permanently. In Atlanta, Peters was involved in railroad construction and management, the primary business concern of the young city, and real estate investment. Realizing the significance the city would have as a transportation center, he suggested changing its provincial name; a business associate coined the name Atlanta and Peters backed its usage. In 1871, Peters and George W. Adair organized the Atlanta Street Railway Co., the city's first. Initially horse-drawn and later electrically powered, the rail service opened up previously remote areas to residential settlement by the city's growing middle class. Both Peters and Adair owned land at the end of these rails lines. Peters owned 400 acres of land immediately north of downtown. In 1878 his Atlanta Street Railway Company's Peachtree line carried passengers north to Ponce de Leon Avenue. By 1893, that line ran as far north as Eighth Street, traversing the entire length of Peter's property.
Upon his death in 1889, his son Edward C. Peters became trustee of the Peters estate. Edward was a civic and business leader of Atlanta. In 1890 he formed the Peters Land Company, which developed many of the family holdings. He is primarily remembered for his association with the Peter's Park development plan which included the land in the original 400-acre tract bought by his father. Peters served as a member of the Atlanta City Council and was later an Alderman. After Edward's death in 1937 the house passed on to his son Wimberly, and then to Wimberly's daughter Lucille, who lived in the house until her death in 1970. Most recently, the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) received the Peters House as a donation. SCAD rehabilitated the house, and it now serves as a cultural arts and writing center for SCAD students, as well as a center where community members can gather for literary events, lectures, and concerts. The house is also open to the public for tours and may be rented for special events.
The Edward C. Peters House, now referred to as Ivy Hall, is located at 179 Ponce de Leon Ave. in midtown Atlanta. Ivy Hall is open to the public on Fridays between 10:00am and 2:00pm for tours. To schedule a group tour call 404-253-3324, and for rental information call 404-253-3206. Visit the Ivy Hall website for more information.
Fox Theatre Historic District
The Fox Theatre Historic District is situated at the intersection of Peachtree Street and Ponce de Leon Avenue in the Midtown section of Atlanta. It contains three major buildings: the Fox Theatre , the Georgian Terrace Hotel and the Ponce de Leon Apartments. Built in 1911, the Georgian Terrace Hotel is a 10-story building of brick and marble designed as a southern version of a Parisian hotel. The Peachtree Street facade is composed of a two-story high window arcade set under a wide cornice supported on narrow pilasters. The center portion of the facade is stepped back and since the cornice remains unbroken, the shallow entrance portico is created. Above this two-story base, the facade remains relatively unadorned until the actual cornice line of the building. The cornice is of highly-decorative terra-cotta flush with the face of the building. The interior of the Georgian Terrace features a marble lobby, general management offices, a glass-enclosed lounging room, telephone booths, and elevators on the first floor. The hotel also includes a dining room, cafe, and a Ladies' Carriage entrance. The Ponce de Leon side of the hotel originally included the "Terrace Garden" designed to represent a tropical garden. Under exotic plants of widespread foliage, green and white tables and chairs were spread to resemble the cafes of Europe.
The Ponce de Leon Apartments was one of the first large, high-rise luxury apartment buildings in Atlanta. It provided residential quarters and offered apartments from one-room to dozens of rooms. Built from 1912 to 1913, the Italianate building features two towers on either side of a gently curving front facade. Balconies are found on some of the upper floors and the pyramidal hipped roofs of the two towers are covered in red tile. On the ground level of the building the base is marked by a large colonnade which curves in a concave manner with the facade. Shops can be found at both the ground and basement levels along the colonnade.
Within the Fox Theatre Historic District, the Georgian Terrace Hotel is located at 659 Peachtree St., in downtown Atlanta and is open during normal business hours; visit the hotel's website at www.thegeorgianterrace.com for more information. The Ponce de Leon Apartments at 79 Ponce de Leon Ave. are private residences and not open to the public. However, the shops in the lower levels of the building are open during normal business hours. The district also includes the Fox Theatre.
Fox Theatre
The Fox Theatre is a premier example of the American movie palace. "The Fabulous Fox" is one of the most ornate movie palaces remaining in the country, and one of the largest (250,000 square feet) movie theaters ever built. It opened on Christmas Day, 1929, near the end of the golden age of the American movie palace. The Fox was not originally intended to be a movie theater. The building was originally planned and designed to be the new headquarters for the Shriners of Atlanta. This local group, the Yaarab Temple, included almost 5,000 members in the late 1920s. The formal name of the Shriners, a national fraternal organization that is a subgroup of the Masons, is the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine.In 1927, the Yaarab Temple held a design competition for their new headquarters building. A local architectural firm, Marye, Alger and Vinour, submitted the winning design, a flamboyant interpretation of a mosque with onion domes, towers, horsehoe and lancet arches, and a minaret. The Yaarab Temple Shriners loved the design because it followed the Arabic theme chosen to promote membership in the national Shriners organization, but they soon found out that the cost to build their new headquarters was more than their budget. The Yaarab Temple subsequently signed a lease to share the building with movie mogul William Fox, the president of the Fox Theater Corporation and the Fox Film Corporation. The deal called for Fox to lease the large, 5,000 seat auditorium planned for the Shriners' new mosque. The cornerstone was laid on June 14, 1928, and The Fox Theatre opened 18 months later on December 25, 1929. The Yaarab Temple dedicated their new mosque a week later on New Year's Day.
The exterior of the building and most of the interior are based on historic Islamic architecture. Several interior spaces are based on historic Egyptian architecture, including the Egyptian Ballroom, the Yaarab Temple's former banquet hall and ballroom. Although the Fox has been classified as a variety of architectural styles, including Neo-Mideastern Eclectic, Neo-Mideastern Exotic, and Islamic Revival architecture, the Fox does not fit typical architectural style definitions because it is really fantasy architecture. It is a premier example of the movie palace architects' free-style approach to design. The Fox includes features and details borrowed from historic mosques constructed from the 10th to the 16th centuries all the way from southern Spain to north Africa, the Mideast, and northern India. Early 20th-century architectural critics called movie palaces like the Fox a "prostitution of architecture," but movie palace builders were not trying to build high-style examples of American architecture. They were trying to construct fantastic, romantic designs that would attract patrons to their movie theaters.
Because of the Great Depression, the Fox Theatre closed only 125 weeks after it opened. Members of the Yaarab Temple could not meet their pledges, and by 1932, William Fox was bankrupt. In December 1932, the mortgage was foreclosed and the theater did not get back on a sound financial footing until later in the 1930s. A new partnership called Mosque Inc. acquired The Fabulous Fox and it prospered as one of Atlanta's finest movie houses from the 1940s through the 1960s.
The Fox was a successful theater for longer than most American movie palaces which had to compete with suburban development, drive-in movies, and television in the 1950s. And the Fox survived longer than most, in large part because Atlanta loved the Fox. In addition to its exceptional architectural design, the Fox also houses the second largest theater organ in the world, a Moller organ affectionately known as "Mighty Mo," as well as its original period furniture collection, including sofas, chairs, vases, lighting fixtures, etc., collected by William Fox's wife Eve. By 1974, however, The Fox was an endangered property. A large corporation wanted the theater site on Peachtree Street for its new high-rise headquarters and tried to have the building razed before the property changed hands.
Uncharacteristically for Atlanta, a grass-roots campaign to "Save the Fox" quickly emerged, championed by a group of local high school students who picketed in front of the theater and attracted media attention at a critical time. Aided by the mayor, the city's new Urban Design Commission, and a new non-profit organization, Atlanta Landmarks, Inc., the campaign was a success. Atlanta Landmarks purchased the Fox in the summer of 1975 and paid the mortgage in 1978, shortly before the repayment deadline. Since that time, the Fox has been financially successful as a multi-purpose performing arts center, and Atlanta Landmarks has spent more than $20 million restoring, rehabilitating, and maintaining the huge building. The Fox Theatre was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1976.
The Fox Theatre is located at 660 Peachtree St. NE in Atlanta. Tours of the theater are usually held Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday at 10:00am and on Saturday at 10:00am and 11:00am; there is a fee. However, due to production and performance schedules, tours are sometimes canceled. Please confirm tour availability with the Atlanta Preservation Center at 404-522-4345. For further information you can also visit the Fox Theatre website.
Georgia Institute of Technology Historic District
As one of the major engineering institutions in the United States, Georgia Tech, founded in 1885, has long been the driving force in the southeast in the area of technological training and innovation for continued industrial and scientific expansion. The Georgia Institute of Technology Historic District is situated on and around the crest of the "the Hill," the highest elevation of the school's original nine-acre campus. Comprised of 12 buildings, the Old Campus is a landscaped cluster of mixed-period classroom, dormitory and administrative brick buildings. Buildings of the Old Campus include the Carnegie Building, which was the campus library until 1953; the President's Office is now located there. Lymnan Hall Laboratory, named after one of Georgia Tech's earlier presidents, was the school's first Chemistry Building. The YMCA Building, funded by John D. Rockefeller in 1910, now houses the Alumni Association Offices. The random placement of these buildings around the centrally positioned Administration Building ("Tech Tower") has created unique urban spaces. Hundred year-old trees shade the red brick buildings and enhance the sense of special enclosure.
The most important quality of "the Hill" is its sense of space and time. As is evident in the placement of the buildings, little thought was actually given to the future expansion of the then young technological school. Instead, the site planning was carried out in such a manner as to meet the immediate and pressing needs of the school. This practical approach has created the significant quality of space. The harmony found within the Old Campus is attributed to the fact that almost all of the buildings were built within a short span of time--from 1885 to 1923. Though all exhibit a consistent approach in design and construction, none include a repetition of style or form.
The Georgia Institute of Technology Historic District is roughly bounded by Fowler, Third, and Cherry Sts. and North Ave. in north Atlanta. Campus tours are offered Monday - Friday at 11:00am and 2:00pm, except holidays. Call 404-894-1939 or visit the Georgia Tech website for more information.
Atlanta Spring and Bed Company--Block Candy Company
Built circa 1900, the Atlanta Spring and Bed Company--Block Candy Company is located in the industrial section northwest of downtown Atlanta. Representing early 20th-century industrial activity in the city, the building was constructed for William R. Ware, an Atlanta furniture manufacturer. The Atlanta Spring and Bed Company was the original occupant of the space from 1900 until 1909. After housing several businesses, the building was then occupied from 1928 until 1936 by the Block Candy Company, Atlanta's first confectionery manufacturer, started by the post-Civil War entrepreneur, Frank E. Block.
The four-story building is a significant example of the utilitarian industrial design used for large manufacturing facilities at the turn of the 20th century. Functional in design, the building features heavy timber post-and-beam construction and masonry load bearing walls with first floor granite walls and upper floor brick walls. Exterior features include segmental arched windows, recessed window bays, brick belt course, and a brick elevator tower. The interior includes the original fire doors, exposed mechanical systems with a historic sprinkler system and exposed wood posts and beams. On the first level, there are brick and granite walls and posts resting on brick piers capped with granite slabs. The second level or main floor has tongue-and-groove floors, brick walls, wood ceilings, and arched window and door openings. The upper levels feature the same elements, except for concrete floors. This building was once part of an industrial complex that included the Atlanta Buggy Company and Ware Hatcher Brothers Furniture Company buildings, as well as others that have been demolished. The industrial building was recently renovated as office space, retaining the exposed brick walls and timbers.
The Atlanta Spring and Bed Company--Block Candy Company, 512 Means St., is used as office space. It is not open to the public, but the lobby serves as an art gallery displaying the work of local artists.
Imperial Hotel
The Imperial Hotel is an eight-story early 20th-century hotel designed in a variation of the Chicago style. It is one of the remaining tall buildings in Atlanta built in the Chicago style during the city's first era of skyscraper construction. This style features a tall, narrow profile, a tripartite exterior design, an internal skeletal frame supporting exterior veneer walls and elevators. This hotel is especially noted for its extensive bay windows, a relatively rare sight in Atlanta. It is one of the few surviving modestly-priced hotels of this era that catered to the businessmen and tourists who flocked to the rapidly growing city and formed the mainstay of its hotel business. In addition, the Imperial Hotel played an important role in the commercial development northward along Peachtree Street.
The rectangular, flat-roofed hotel has a reinforced concrete frame faced with red brick veneer inset with terra cotta. Its front facade has a tall, narrow silhouette, subdivided into a tripartite arrangement of a projecting first floor, a plainly detailed shaft and a more ornate cap. Between the pairs of double hung sash windows, vertical pier-like sections rise uninterrupted from the second to the seventh floor where a string course marks the start of the cap. Both sides of the building are articulated with seven rows of bay windows which extend as continuous projections from the second to the eighth floors, alternating with rows of small sash windows. The projecting first floor, providing a nondescript entrance to the hotel, was built in 1953 to replace the original open brick arcade with Tudor arches. On the interior, the hotel has public areas on both the first floor and in the basement with hotel rooms above. The first floor contained a lobby and a lounge area which was extensively remodeled following a 1968 fire. Some historic features in the lobby included a Tudor-arched stone fireplace, marble wainscoting, crown molding around the exposed concrete ceiling beams and a fan-light above the opening to the lounge area. Two historic Otis elevators with all their original equipment and a stairwell rise through the building. The upper floor rooms are organized off both sides of a T-shaped central corridor. The hotel was vacated in the early 1980s, and stood empty until a rehabilitation effort in 1996 restored the building into a low-income housing project.
The Imperial Hotel, 355 Peachtree St., now contains 120 apartments. It is not open to the public.
Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus
The Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus is not only important for its unusually innovative revival architecture and the artistry of its stained glass windows and wall paintings, but also for its role as a religious and educational center for the Catholic community of Atlanta for well over a century. The Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus is regarded as an important work of W. T. Downing, one of the most notable southern architects of the early 20th century. The church is a significant Romanesque Revival design in the context of American ecclesiastical architecture of the period. There have been no alterations since its construction in 1898, other than occasional restorations of paint, changes in the high altar, and the refinishing of the church towers. The land for the church was purchased by the Marist Fathers of Jefferson College in Louisiana in 1897. The property was transferred a few months later to the Marist Society of Georgia. One year later, the church was dedicated by Bishop Thomas A. Becker, Bishop of Savannah. In the 1960s, the ownership of the church was transferred from the Marist Society of Georgia to the Archdiocese of Atlanta.
The exterior is built of pressed brick and terra cotta with marble embellishments. Its western facade is composed of two identical towers flanking a central bay and portico containing a vestibule and tribune. The long rectangular mass of the church contains a nave flanked by side aisles and gallery which terminate at an apse. This sanctuary is covered by a single pitched roof. The portico, a tripartite entrance under a corbelled pediment and marble cross, projects from the facade creating deeply recessed doorways. Arched and circular windows light the tympanums above these doorways. Above the entrance and gallery, the gabled bay containing a large rose window supports a corbelled cornice and marble cross echoing that of the portico. Along the side facades, seven strip buttresses rise to a cornice and are contiguous with a corbel table. These buttresses divide the basement floor and the two sanctuary floors into equal bays containing round arch windows. The basement, half sunken into the ground, is used for offices. When it was completed, Sacred Heart was situated in a residential part of town and surrounded with large trees. At the time, many people of Atlanta felt the church was being built too far out of town to serve any useful purpose. Today, the only grassy areas left are two small strips of courtyard on the church's north and south sides.
Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus is located at 353 Peachtree St. in downtown Atlanta. It is open to the public during regular church services; call 404-522-6800 or visit the church's website for more information.
Candler Building
The Candler Building was one of Atlanta's most luxurious high-rise buildings of the early 20th century. Great care was taken in the design of the 17-story building as it was meant to be a monument to Asa G. Candler--prominent Atlanta businessman, one-time mayor, and philanthropist who founded the Coca-Cola empire. Candler came to Atlanta in 1873 and his work as a wholesale druggist led to his acquaintance with the original developer of the Coca-Cola formula, Dr. Pemberton, and the druggists who sold the drink. In 1888, Candler, Woolford Walker, and Dr. Joseph Jacobs organized a corporation to take over Coca-Cola. Candler bought out the others' interest over a three-year period. His skills at merchandizing launched the success of his product, and his Coca-Cola-based fortune enabled him to pursue interests in real estate, banking, politics, and the Methodist Church. Asa Candler originally lived in Inman Park but moved to Druid Hills in 1916, the year he became mayor.
In 1903, Candler purchased land for his intended office and commercial high-rise. Candler selected architects George E. Murphy and George Stewart, but was involved with many of the construction and design decisions, such as the selection of the snow-white Amicalola marble that sheaths the building's exterior. The marble, from the quarries of the Atlanta Marble Company in northern Georgia, was used in the cornerstone laid December 20, 1905. Within the cornerstone was placed "a Bible, copies of the regular issues of several of Atlanta's daily newspapers and other appropriate souvenirs," including a portrait of Asa Candler and a bottle of Coca-Cola. No expense was spared in design of the Candler Building, to ensure that it would be one of the finest high-rises in the central business district. Typical of the era, its exterior was visually and structural divided into three parts--a two-story base, a 12-story shaft and a three-story capital with large overhanging cornice. The interior of the Candler Building featured special floors designed for use by doctors, dentists, and surgeons; a banking hall; six passenger elevators which were "at all times under the charge of a thoroughly competent engineer"; a barbershop; and what were said to be the "finest baths in America," located in the first basement of the building. Duplicate air-cooling and electric systems were installed to reduce the chance of a total systems failure, and a building-wide "vacuum air-cleaning device" was installed. The triangular building had entrances on all three sides; the largest and most elaborate of these was on the Houston Street side and provided access to the Central Bank and Trust Corporation, which Candler organized in 1906 to occupy the lobby floor of his new skyscraper. The size and prominent location of the building, the magnificent sculpture executed by craftsmen under the direction of F.B. Miles, and a total, well-conceived design all contribute to the deliberate monumentality of the building.
The Candler Building is located at 127 Peachtree St. in downtown Atlanta. It is still used as an office building, and some of the business within are open during normal business hours. The Atlanta Preservation Center (www.preserveatlanta.com ) also offers guided walking tours of the downtown area that begin at the Candler Building, March-November on Fridays at 12:00 noon, Saturdays at 10:00am, and Sundays at 2:00pm; there is a fee.
Fairlie--Poplar Historic District
The Fairlie--Poplar Historic District is Atlanta's historic central business district and includes the largest concentrated collection of commercial and office buildings in Atlanta from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Individually, these buildings represent some of the city's finest late Victorian and early 20th-century commercial buildings, and range from storefront commercial buildings to skyscrapers. Local interpretations of prevailing national architectural styles, including Chicago, Renaissance Revival, Neoclassical, Commercial, Art Deco, Georgian Revival, and Victorian Eclectic styles, are found here. The buildings of the district also represent the shift in building technology from loadbearing masonry and timber walls to steel and concrete framing.Known at the time as "Atlanta's new modern fireproof business district," the area developed during the years when Atlanta emerged as the commercial center of Georgia and the Southeast. It constituted a major northward expansion of Atlanta's 19th-century business district, which was largely concentrated in an east-west band along the railroad tracks cutting across the city. The new business district contained a wide variety of wholesale and retail operations, which marketed a broad spectrum of consumer goods and services. Public agencies and many of Atlanta's business offices were also located here. Building materials included brick, stone, cast iron, wood, pressed metal, terra cotta, and plate glass. The buildings in this district range in height from two to 16 stories, the taller constructed with steel or concrete frames, while the smaller buildings were built with loadbearing masonry and timber structural systems. Individual buildings listed in the National Register of Historic Places that lie within the Fairlie--Poplar Historic District include the English-American Building , and the U.S. Post Office and Courthouse.
The Fairlie--Poplar Historic District is roughly bounded by Marietta, Peachtree, Luckie and Cone sts. Many of the businesses in the district are open to the public during normal businesses hours. For more information visit Fairlie Poplar. Walking tours are available at 2:00 pm on Sundays from March-November. Visit The Atlanta Preservation Center for more information.
English--American Building
The English--American Building, built in 1897, is Atlanta's oldest standing skyscraper. It was designed by Bradford Gilbert for the English--American Loan and Trust Company. It pre-dates New York City's larger and more famous Flatiron Building built in 1901 by D.H. Burnham and Company. The English--American Building has played an important role in structuring the urban environment of downtown Atlanta. Both the exterior surfaces and the narrow triangular form have continually provided a strong anchor to the central business district (the Fairlie--Poplar Historic District). In 1910 it became known as the Empire Life Building for six years until it was renamed the Flatiron Building.
The building is an 11-story, narrow triangular steel-framed building which conforms to its lot between Peachtree, Broad and Poplar streets in the center of Atlanta's downtown business district. The steel frame is enclosed at the base in heavy limestone piers, while stone facing in upper stories provides a vigorously sculptural form for the entire building. The street facades contain the base and shaft capital components. The base is equivalent to two stories in height with large glass areas separated by stone piers. The two upper floors above a heavy cornice and a parapet are the cap of the building.
While the exterior of the building remains intact, some alterations to the original fabric have occurred. The original brick and limestone wall surfaces have been subsequently painted. A corridor originally passed through the center of the building with elevators adjacent to this passageway, and the original walls of this area have been remodeled with smooth marble. The Georgia Savings Bank and Trust Company purchased the building in 1920 and held the title for more than 50 years. In 1974, the Hamilton Bank and Trust Company acquired the building. Presently, Historic Urban Equities Limited owns the building and leases office space to various organizations, including several architectural firms.
The English--American Building, more commonly known as the Flatiron Building, is located at 84 Peachtree St. in downtown Atlanta. It is open to the public during normal business hours.
U.S. Post Office and Courthouse
The U.S. Post Office and Courthouse is one of the most architecturally important and distinguished buildings of the early 20th century remaining in downtown Atlanta. Built in the Second Renaissance Revival style, the Old Post Office was first occupied in 1911 after more than three years of construction. James Knox Taylor, Supervising Architect of the Treasury Department at the time, designed the building. The Old Post Office is an imposing building, covering one block in the center of downtown. The five-story, U-shaped building has a granite exterior on the street facades and buff-colored brick surfacing in the court area. The ground story is rusticated while the upper wall surfaces are smooth, providing a background for a variety of ornate openings. Surmounting the building is a heavy cornice making the low roof invisible from the street.
The basic interior floor plan has not changed drastically, although some details have been either altered or eliminated. The halls of the first floor or main post area consist of series of arches resting on flat marble pilasters. Wainscoting and window and door framing are marble while upper wall surfaces are plaster. Elevators are located near the stairwells, although the original grillwork has disappeared. The United States Court of Appeals is located on the third floor. The large, rectangular courtroom is covered with elaborately carved oak paneling, repeating many of the motifs of the exterior. In 1931, major postal services were moved to a newer building.
The U.S. Post Office and Courthouse is located at 76 Forsyth St. in downtown Atlanta. It is now the Federal Court of Appeals and is not open to the public.
Hurt Building
The form of the Hurt Building, constructed from 1913 to 1926, was dictated by its irregularly shaped site and is one of Atlanta's numerous triangular-shaped buildings. Said to be the 17th-largest office building in the world at the time of its construction, it is a good Atlanta example of the skyscraper form that was developed by Louis Sullivan and the Chicago School. The main shaft of the building was erected in 1913 and the building was finished, with the exception of the decoration of the rotunda entrance, early in October of that year. The Atlanta Constitution reported on September 28, that the new Hurt Building would open its doors about October 1, 1913. World War I delayed the construction of the wings and light court of the building until 1924, with the final portion of the building being completed during 1926.The Hurt Building stands 17 floors in height, and is composed of straight fronts, a flat roof, level skyline, subordination of ornament, a regular pattern of fenestration, and cornices of moderate projection. The four lower floors, which constitute the base of the building, were made to cover the entire allowable building site with the exception of the apex of the building--facing the main business section at Five Points--which was cut back 30 feet to allow a greater window area and a more majestic view of the building. The 13 floors above this base follows a V-shape arrangement: the two wings extend from the western apex of the property along both Exchange Place and Edgewood Avenue leaving an open light court between the wings opening toward Ivy Street. If any ornamental elements could be singled-out in the Hurt Building they are those of classical derivation. For, in addition to the classical details found in the rotunda, pilasters are also found which separate the windows of the ground floor, and a balustrade, located on top of the rotunda, is extended as an entablature down the sides of the building to mark the base. The rotunda consists of a moderate dome set on marble columns and, situated at the western apex of the building's triangular site, acts as the entrance level extending through the building to Ivy Street on the east.
The Hurt Building also reflects the ideas and concepts of its builder, Joel Hurt (1850-1926). Hurt, an Atlanta engineer and builder, was a motivating force in many new developments in Atlanta. He was known to have made preliminary drawings for several years before he hired J.E.R. Carpenter, a prominent New York architect, well experienced in the design of high-rise buildings, to draw up the final plans for the Hurt Building. Hurt's training as an engineer helped in the final design of the building, as he strove to keep the "frills" of design down to a minimum and sought to create a more "efficient" and direct approach to design for the sake of clarity and unity. While the building is more ornamental than other streamlined buildings of the modernism school, the unity between structure and design is maintained, and it holds up well against more recent postmodern designs in architecture. It remains one of the most highly visible and architecturally important examples of early skyscraper construction in Atlanta.
The Hurt Building is at 50 Hurt Plaza, in downtown Atlanta. It is an office building, and is not open to the public.
Dixie Coca-Cola Bottling Company
The Dixie Coca-Cola Bottling Company is the oldest surviving building associated with the early days of "Coke," the soft drink that has been called "the holy water of the American South." From 1900 to 1901 it was the headquarters and plant of the Dixie Coca-Cola Bottling Company, parent of the Coca-Cola Bottling Company. The building represents Coca-Cola's transformation from strictly a fountain treat to primarily a bottled drink. Until the mid-1890s, Coca-Cola was sold only at soda fountains. At that time the head of Coca-Cola , Asa Candler, was not interested in bottling. Candler was approached by several individuals who wanted to bottle the soft-drink for him in different regions. Benjamin Thomas and Joseph Whitehead secured a contract with Candler for exclusive rights to bottle Coca-Cola for the Southeast, Southwest and Midwest, with Candler supplying the syrup. This contract has been heralded as one of the most valuable contracts in the annals of American business. Thomas opened their first plant in Chattanooga. It was Whitehead, with investor John Lupton, who opened the second plant in Atlanta, originally known as the Dixie Coca-Cola Bottling Company. Whitehead assumed the responsibility of marketing their bottled product and the operation expanded so quickly that they outgrew the plant on Edgewood Avenue within a year. Whitehead and Lupton began selling franchises to other bottlers, first in Atlanta where 16 franchises were established, and then nationally.
The bottling plant itself is an interesting Victorian commercial building. Constructed in 1891, the two-story brick building was irregularly shaped to fits its angled corner lot. It originally provided space for shops on the lower floor and living quarters above, before being adapted for a bottling plant. The eclectic features of the building include a Dutch stepped gable with oval attic window, a wooden balcony under a pedimented gable roof, Italian Renaissance-inspired arcade, round-arched windows, square turret, and a pyramidal hipped roof. During its time as the Coca-Cola bottling plant headquarters, there was an automated factory in the basement where the Coca-Cola syrup was produced, and offices on the upper floors. Today it houses the Georgia State University Baptist Student Union. The property was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1983.
The Dixie Coca-Cola Bottling Company is located at 125 Edgewood Ave., at the corner of Edgewood Ave. and Courtland St.
Coca-Cola Building Annex
Built in 1903 to house the newly formed Coca-Cola Chewing Gum Company, the Coca-Cola Building Annex represents the early development of the Coca-Cola Company and its attempts to diversify its line of products. Other products included cigars and candies. Unlike their soft drink, the gum was not successful and Coca-Cola dropped the product in 1905. The building was an annex to the Dixie Coca-Cola Bottling Company Plant , Atlanta's Coca-Cola bottling headquarters which contained office space and a highly automated factory in the basement where the Coca-Cola syrup was produced.The three-story Classical Revival Annex building extended the main building by five bays with its cornice heights, building materials, fenestration and organization of the facade closely matching the headquarters' exterior. The three-part main facade features a rusticated basement level, a first floor with large plate-glass windows framed by paired pilasters, and at the second and third levels, double and tripartite windows grouped between pilasters. Classical Revival details include terra cotta brackets and capitals, a modillion and dentil cornice, and elliptical windows. Historic fabric that remains intact on the interior of the building includes common bond perimeter brick walls, exposed floor joists, wood sub floors, wood baseboards, and window surrounds. Rehabilitations that took place from 1983 to 1984 and 1993 to 1994 have subdivided the once large open interior spaces into many smalls rooms on every level. A light well and skylight were also constructed on the east side of the building. The present use of the Annex is for housing homeless HIV-positive and AIDS patients that are receiving outpatient treatment at nearby Grady Hospital , as well as administrative offices.
The Coca-Cola Building Annex, 187 Edgewood Ave., is privately owned and not open to the public.
Grady Hospital
When it opened in 1892, Grady Hospital represented the most advanced principles and philosophies of medicine and hospital architecture. The city-owned and operated hospital was named for Henry W. Grady, a prominent Atlanta newspaper editor and proponent of the "New South." He and other leaders of Atlanta wanted a facility that would be free from all sectarian and denominational influences. When Grady Hospital opened, it welcomed rich, poor, black and white. The hospital was originally a connected series of Romanesque style buildings, but now only the three-story main building survives. The wards, outbuildings and one-eighth mile of connecting corridors were demolished in 1959 to make way for a parking lot.
The brick main building rests on a basement of solid granite. Facing west, the main facade has a one-story portico flanked by a set of paired windows and set of tiered windows. The large round arch of the entry portico is detailed with an egg-and-dart molding and carved keystone. An ornate frieze with the name of the hospital runs around the three sides of the portico and is topped by a concrete balustrade. Above the portico are recessed center windows on the second and third floors. Granite brackets above the second floor bring the third-floor balcony of open brickwork flush with the facade. On the north side of the building is the tower with an enclosed fourth level housing an emergency water tank. Its fifth level is open and originally housed the emergency bell. The bell was replaced by chimes in 1900.
The interior of the first floor features a wide hall dividing the first floor from side to side and another hall crossing the building north to south, separating the main entry from the rear of the building. The second floor was designed for 10 private rooms for paying patients. Although the hospital was provided with steam heat from its own plant, six of these rooms had working fireplaces. The rooms were built with rounded corners in the belief that it was more sanitary. The nurse and staff quarters were located on the third floor. In 1903, a new operating room was attached to the northeast corner of the main building. Ten years later, a new six-story hospital building was connected to the main building through the small emergency room wing. Except for these two major changes, the exterior of the main building remains intact.
The main building of Grady Hospital is located at 36 Butler St. in Atlanta. It is currently Georgia Hall, the hospital's Human Resources Department, and is not open to the public.
Shrine of the Immaculate Conception
The Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, the first Catholic Church and Mother Parish of Atlanta, is one of the oldest standing buildings in the city. This church is a highly imaginative early Victorian, Gothic Revival building. It was designed in 1869 by 33-year-old William H. Parkins, who had come to Atlanta the year before and continued to practice in the city until 1882. Drawing upon English and European church architecture, Parkins built what was at the time the most magnificent edifice in the city. It was the harbinger of the new, post-Civil War Atlanta, and although today surrounded by the skyscrapers of the 20th century, the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception is one of the few vestiges of the old city and of the work of William Parkins.The first Catholic Church in the city was a square-framed church built in 1848 and dedicated to the Virgin Mary and named the Immaculate Conception in her honor. In 1861, Father Thomas O'Reilly was appointed Pastor of the church, and it was due to his influence with General Slocumb of Sherman's occupying Union army that some of the original buildings of Atlanta were saved from burning in 1864. During the siege of Atlanta, however, the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception was severely damaged by shellfire. The parishioners decided to build a new church dedicated to the Virgin Mary on the site of its predecessor. The estimated cost of construction was between $75,000 and $80,000. The cornerstone was laid on September 1, 1869 by Bishop Verot of Savannah, but it was not until 1873 that the huge church was finally completed and dedication ceremonies held.
This beautiful example of Gothic Revival church architecture is an eclectic manifestation of an American version of religious architecture in which the style is a product of both foreign and local influences. The overall form of the church with its flat brick walls and square towers with corner pinnacles suggests a "Commissioners' Gothic" style which originated in England in the early 1800s. However, Parkins combined this with a French Gothic flavor found in the three rose windows and the towered facade. The nave was adapted from Italian Gothic design, as was the round organ loft balcony. The church super-structure, built of red brick, has a modified cruciform plan defined on the exterior by a pitched roof over the long nave, intersected by shorter transept roofs adjacent to the apse and its side chapels. The most striking feature of the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception's exterior is the pair of square towers flanking the central gable over a tripartite entrance. Alterations were done to the interior in 1923, 1954, and 1969. The exterior has remained largely intact except in 1923 when it lost a parapet balustrade with large trefoil crosses that connected the four pinnacles of its northern tower. In 1954, the Church of the Immaculate Conception was rededicated as a shrine.
The Shrine of the Immaculate Conception is located at 48 Martin Luther King, Jr., Dr., SE in downtown Atlanta. It is open to the public during regular church services; call 404-521-1866 or visit the church's website for more information.
Georgia State Capitol
The Georgia State Capitol, completed in 1889, is a landmark in the history of 19th-century American architecture. In style, form, and plan, it is a perfect expression and symbol of the idea of a Capitol building for the "Capital of the New South," as Atlanta was called after Reconstruction. Reminiscent of the U.S. Capitol Building, it directly expressed Atlanta's new nationalism when city leaders were rebuilding the destroyed Confederate railroad center in a new image. Atlanta became the temporary location of the State capital in 1868, and when this became permanent in 1877, the city offered the State five acres on which to erect a capitol building. It took several years of legislative appropriations and bids before construction began in 1884. At the cost of nearly one million dollars, the architectural firm of Edbrooke and Burnham of Chicago designed the Neo-Classical style building.
The Capitol's main entrance, approached on a wide concrete plaza, faces downtown Atlanta. Dominating this west facade is a four-story portico, the pediment being supported by six columns in the composite order and six rusticated piers. This entrance leads into the main floor located on the second level of the building. Above this pedimented portico rises a dome and lantern covered with Georgia gold leaf, topped by a female statue of Freedom holding a sword to her side and a lantern aloft. Indiana oolithic limestone is the chief facing material. The rear facade essentially duplicates the front. Inside, Georgia marble was used for floors, steps, and a facing for walls. On the west side of the open rotunda, above the entrance way and defined by the portico, is the House Chamber. On the east side is the Senate Chamber. Oak paneling in both chambers was a massive exercise in Florentine Renaissance motifs with an Eastlake Victorian touch. Statuary, marble busts, portraits, markers, Confederate and other war flags and banners are displayed on every floor. Under the rotunda is a Hall of Fame with marble busts of the Georgia signers of the Declaration of Independence, as well as other notable citizens from the past. The fourth floor corridors have displays which comprise the Georgia State Museum of Science and Industry. In continuous use as a state capitol housing the legislative and state government offices, it remains an important architectural and historic landmark.
The Georgia State Capitol is located at 206 Washington St. on Capitol Square in downtown Atlanta, near the intersection of I-20 and I-75/85. The Capitol and the Georgia Capitol Museum are open to the public from 8:00am to 5:30pm Monday-Friday. To view the legislature in session, please note that the General Assembly meets from January-March and also during special sessions. For specific tour information call 404-656-2844 or visit the State Capitol website.
Central Presbyterian Church
Central Presbyterian Church was constructed in 1885 as the congregation's second church. Central Presbyterian was organized in 1858 with 39 members from Atlanta's original Presbyterian congregation. The church was designed in the English Gothic style and has rough cut limestone on the main facade and plain brick on the others. It has a high bell tower with a pyramidal roof and truncated tower. An entrance foyer at street level has stairs leading to the sanctuary that is one level above the street. It retains its original stained glass windows, stairs, wainscoting, plaster walls, and altar area.
Socially committed to the community, the church established outreach programs to all areas of the city by launching a dozen mission Sunday Schools and five new churches by 1890. In 1907, it founded the Atlanta Union Mission to provide shelter and meals to the homeless. A public health clinic for babies provided free medical service to children of needy families beginning in 1922. In 1925, a three-story adjacent building, called the Campbell-Eagan Building was constructed, with brick walls and a slate roof . The first and second floors housed classrooms while the third level contained a gymnasium with a balcony and a stage. The church continues to support the community through its daycare center and Family Clinic.
Central Presbyterian Church is located at 201 Washington St., in Atlanta. It is open to the public during regular church services.
Atlanta City Hall
Atlanta City Hall, completed in 1930, is a fine example of a Neo-Gothic government building. The Atlanta City Hall is an 11-story tower set on a four story rectangular base, with pointed arches and uninterrupted piers. The reinforced concrete building has a cream-colored terra cotta veneer covering the entire building. There are white marble balustrades and steps at the Mitchell Street entrance. The lobby and other public spaces have decorative marble wainscoting, walls, and pillars, and ornamented plaster cornices. Prominent local architect G. Lloyd Preacher, who moved to Atlanta from Augusta, Georgia in 1922, designed Atlanta City Hall. Preacher designed many buildings in Atlanta and throughout the Southeast. Among his designs in Atlanta are the Wynne-Claughton (Carnegie) Building, the Pershing Point Apartments/Hotel, the Medical Arts Building, and the McGlawn-Bowan (Standard) Building.
Atlanta's citizens have come here to visit city officials, attend meetings, and other business related to city government since its opening. In 1926 an $8 million bond issue was approved by Atlanta's citizens, of which $1 million was used for the construction of the new City Hall. The City of Atlanta moved its records and offices to the new City Hall in February 1930. Many historic events have taken place in this building. Mayor William B. Hartsfield called upon the legislature to desegregate Atlanta's schools without State intervention, and Maynard Jackson became the first African American elected mayor of any southern city since reconstruction. Three city halls existed in Atlanta prior to this one, the first (1855-1882) being located directly across the street from this building, on the current site of the Georgia State Capitol. The second City Hall was located at Pryor Street and Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive in a building owned by the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce (1882-1911). The third City Hall was located in the U.S. Post Office and Courthouse (1911-1930). The current location was originally the site of a private home and later a girl's high school until the city purchased the land in the 1920s for the site of the future City Hall. The main offices of City Hall remained at this location until March 1989, when a new addition at 55 Trinity Street opened and the 1930 building was closed for renovation work. The City Hall Annex facing Trinity Avenue was completed in March of 1989.
Atlanta City Hall is located at 68 Mitchell St., S.W., at the southeast corner of the intersection of Central Ave. and Mitchell St. Now serving as the Council Chambers for City Hall, it is used for many public meetings including that of the Atlanta Urban Design Commission; contact them for more information at 404-330-6200 or visit their website for more information.
Underground Atlanta Historic District
After the devastation of Atlanta during the Civil War, the city began to rebuild itself around the railroad tracks that brought goods and people to the city. However, by the 1920s, Atlanta had a growing traffic problem. A series of viaducts was built to bridge the railroad tracks and relieve congestion in the downtown area. The viaducts illustrate a dramatic early 20th-century chapter in local transportation and were part of a largely unrealized City Beautiful plan to fashion a Beaux Arts civic center above the railroad. Atlanta continued to grow above these viaducts--and above the original street level of the center city. The ground floors of these buildings, essentially sealed off by the viaducts, reflect the typical architecture of this period. Those that front Alabama, Pryor and Peachtree streets remain the most intact examples.
These post-bellum business blocks were abandoned for decades, but were rediscovered and redeveloped as a shopping and entertainment district called Underground Atlanta in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Today they remain a distinct, urban environment. The storefronts along the north side of Alabama Street are the surviving lower portions of buildings that were demolished to make way for the MARTA rapid-rail line. Most of the storefronts in Underground Atlanta date from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and are generally Victorian in style. Within the district is also the Zero Mile Post, which marked the beginning point of the State-built railroad line that fostered the development of the city.
Underground Atlanta, a shopping and entertainment district, is open to the public during normal business hours. For further information visit www.underground-atlanta.com.
Western and Atlantic Railroad Zero Milepost
The Zero Milepost stands as a reminder of the early railroad days and the birth of the city of Atlanta. This stone milepost marks the southeastern terminus of the Western and Atlantic Railroad. It was this railroad that provided the impetus for the beginning and subsequent growth of the city of Atlanta and marks the center of the city from which the Atlanta city limits were measured. The rectangular, stone marker measures approximately one foot wide on each side and 42 inches tall. The crown is pyramidal and the inscription "W & A RR 138" is roughly carved into one side and "W & A RR OO" on another. The Western and Atlantic Railroad was established by the State legislature after another rail line connecting Charleston to Cincinnati bypassed the State, and went through Tennessee instead. A convention was held and it was decided that the State of Georgia would build its own railroad through the center of the State and allow private branch lines to join with it. When the legislature met in November of 1836, a bill to construct a railroad at State expense was introduced and passed 76 to 65. No specific locations for terminal points were named but generally they were to be on the Tennessee line near the Tennessee River at or near Rossville and then in a direct route to the southeastern bank of the Chattahoochee River.
Colonel Stephen Harriman Long was hired to survey and build the road on May 12, 1837. After several earlier moves it was decided that the line should extend south of the river to provide a better location for lines to Athens, Madison, Milledgeville and Forsyth. The location was changed in 1837 to land Lot 78, District 14, DeKalb County (between the present Forsyth and Magnolia streets). After construction began in 1838, discussion continued on the location of the southeastern terminus. Then, in 1842, a new and final point was established, only 1200 feet from the previous point, in the northeast corner of Land Lot 77, 14th District, DeKalb (later Fulton) County. This point was located at Loyd Street, now Central Avenue, between Alabama and Decatur streets from surveys by C.F.M. Garett and F.C. Arms. A five-acre tract including the point was donated to the State by Samuel Mitchell in 1842 which allowed for the construction of the depot buildings. In 1850 the zero milepost was placed at this location. From this small, struggling railroad town has grown one of the largest metropolitan cities in the country.
The Western and Atlantic Railroad Zero Milepost, within the Underground Atlanta Historic District, is located under the Central Ave. viaduct, between Alabama and Wall sts. It is inside a building that currently houses the Georgia State University Security Office. To reach this site, enter the parking garage at the corner of Central Ave. and Alabama St., take the elevator to the basement, and ask for directions to the Security Office.
Hotel Row Historic District
Hotel Row is a single block of historic commercial buildings along Mitchell Street that, when built, was part of Atlanta's original business district, in the shadow of the city's main railroad station. This district is largely unchanged from the beginning of the 20th century. Only the first floor storefronts have been modified. The brick buildings are between three and five stories high with plate glass storefronts and symmetrical facades. Several buildings were built specifically as hotels. Built as a Jewish community center, Concordia Hall is the oldest building within Hotel Row and survived a fire in May 1908 that destroyed the rest of the commercial buildings on this block. The three-story brick building once featured a high Victorian facade with gabled roofs, arched windows crowned with pediments, parapet cornices and a projecting onion dome turret at the southwest corner. Because of alterations in the early 20th century, much of the detailing is gone. The ground level along Mitchell Street was originally designed for small shops and served as additional income for the Concordia Association. The interior includes five separate shops occuping the street and basement levels and corresponding to the five bays which line the main facade. The second level contains one large open room in the front and smaller rooms facing the back alley. The third level consists of more than 20 guestrooms with private baths.
The Gordon Hotel is a three-story, buff-colored brick building featuring three bay windows on the second and third levels, recessed between Ionic pilasters. The street level facade also features stone pilasters with Ionic capitals and a dentillated cornice. A narrow alley runs between the Gordon and the adjacent commercial red brick building. The Scoville Hotel, formerly the Marion Hotel, is a three-story, buff-colored building having four paired windows across the upper levels. Modillions and dentils ornament the heavy cornice line. The interior lobby of the hotel contains some original light fixtures and a crafted wooden front desk. The floor is a black and white checkerboard tile pattern with the name "Scoville" laid in red tile in the front foyer. The commercial building next to the Scoville is a three-story stone, frame and red brick building featuring three window panels recessed between clustered brick piers. The piers support heavy stone lintels beneath a cornice. The Sylvan Hotel is the last building that constitutes Hotel Row. It is a four-story building constructed of buff-colored brick built to house guests and workers of the railroad. Five bays wide, the building now houses retail establishments on the street level.
Hotel Row includes 205 through 235 Mitchell St. (odd numbers only). The first floor shops are open during normal business hours.
Castleberry Hill Historic District
The Castleberry Hill Historic District is a densely developed commercial district adjacent to one of Atlanta's main rail lines. It consists of one- to three-story brick buildings historically used for retail, wholesale, and light industry. Growing alongside the Central of Georgia / Southern Railroad tracks from the 1890s to the 1930s, the district covers approximately 40 acres and includes more than 100 buildings. It is the only remaining collection of railroad service and distribution buildings that document the roots of Atlanta's beginnings as a railroad town. The district began as a residential area occupied by a mix of working and middle-class people. It grew as a trade and commercial strip, a support center for railroad and railroad-related businesses and a shopping area for the adjacent residential areas. By 1878 one of the city's first mule-drawn trolley lines was routed through the district. In the 1880s a new freight depot and several spur lines were built along the main tracks, rapidly increasing the pace of commercialization and industrialization.
Peters Street, running the length of the district, is lined with retail buildings designed in modest late Victorian and early 20th-century Commercial styles. They are predominantly one- and two-story buildings with flat roofs and high parapets. All originally had street level storefronts set between brick piers, but many of these first floors have been altered. The buildings are detailed with corbelled cornices, segmented and rounded arch windows, cast stone sills, and decorated spandrel panels and stepped parapets. Situated along Nelson and Walker streets are almost solid rows of two- and three-story warehouses. The majority were built in the 1920s, and are early 20th-century Commercial style buildings with flat facades and modest amounts of detailing. Industrial sash windows and track loading doors are found in most of the buildings.
Castleberry Hill Historic District is roughly bounded by Nelson St., Southern & Central of Georgia Railroad, McDaniel, Peters and Walker sts. The shops within the district are open during normal business hours. For special tours, check with the Castleberry Hill Neighborhood Association.
Atlanta University Center Historic District
The Atlanta University Center District encompasses a group of the country's major institutions of higher learning for African Americans. They have not only pioneered in offering educational opportunities to African Americans, but have been a progressive force in the development of the black community in Atlanta, which in turn, has had considerable impact upon the nation. Located west of Atlanta's central business district, the six colleges of the Atlanta University Center include: Atlanta University; Clark, Morehouse, Morris Brown and Spelman Colleges; and the Interdenominational Theological Center. Atlanta University was founded in 1865 as an institution offering a liberal arts education. In 1929, Atlanta University became the graduate school for the affiliated group of colleges.
At the northernmost end of the district is the oldest campus, which is now occupied by Morris Brown College. The National Historic Landmark building Stone (Fountain) Hall is located on this campus. One block east and north of the Morris Brown campus is a residential street. This was a part of the original property of Atlanta University on which faculty homes were located. On the western boundary of Morris Brown and the Interdenominational Center are residential streets containing many typical Victorian frame cottages with occasional examples of Eastlake style detailing. Also in the area between the old campus and the later Atlanta University campus are the buildings of the University Homes housing development. These are two-story, red brick buildings with wrought iron balconies above projecting entranceways designed in a modified International style. The southern section of the district is occupied by the quadrangle of Atlanta University's present campus surrounded by Morehouse, Spelman and Clark Colleges. Also located within the boundaries of the Atlanta University Center District are two historic churches. West Hunter Street Baptist Church occupied a late Romanesque Revival building in the northern section of the district until 1972. Friendship Church, in the eastern section, is strongly linked by tradition and history with the district.
The Atlanta University Center Historic District is roughly bordered by the transit right-of-way, Northside Dr., Walnut, Fair, Roach, West End Dr., and Euralee and Chestnut sts. The grounds of the University are open to the public. For further information about the Atlanta University Center, visit their affiliated library. The Atlanta University Center Historic District is also highlighted in our Historic Places of the Civil Rights Movement itinerary.
Stone Hall, Atlanta University
Built in 1882, Stone Hall was the administration building for Atlanta University until 1929. It is a three-story red brick Queen Anne style building with Romanesque Revival elements. The school opened its doors in 1869 on a campus consisting of approximately 50 acres west of downtown. In 1929, Atlanta University united with Morehouse College and Spelman College to form the Atlanta University Center affiliation. Morehouse and Spelman continued to offer undergraduate degrees while Atlanta University became the graduate school for the other two colleges. As part of this affiliation, Atlanta University gave up most of the buildings on its original campus and moved into new quarters with the other two schools.
Stone Hall is the building most closely associated with the history of Atlanta University. It primarily functioned as the college's administration building, but it also contained classrooms and meeting rooms. When the colleges merged, Stone Hall was one of the buildings leased to Morris Brown College, which changed the name of the building to Fountain Hall. It is still used as a classroom building. Stone Hall has undergone no exterior alteration since its construction. The interior has seen some changes, including the installation of modern heating, cooling and electrical systems, but the original floor plan remains intact. Stone Hall was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1974.
Stone Hall (Fountain Hall) is located on the grounds of Morris Brown College at 643 Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. Visitors to the campus are welcome. For more information visit the Morris Brown website.
Herndon Home
Completed in 1910, the Herndon Home, was the residence of Alonzo Herndon and his family. Herdon was a former slave raised in a sharecropping family after the Civil War. Herndon studied barbering, and owned and managed a string of barbershops in downtown Atlanta after the Civil War, one of which was considered to be the most elegant in the country with marble floors and chandelier. Investing his income into real estate, Herndon became the largest black property owner in Atlanta by 1900. Later, Herndon founded the Atlanta Life Insurance Company, located in the Sweet Auburn Historic District, and became Atlanta's first black millionaire. The home was primarily designed by Adrienne Herndon, Alonzo's first wife and a teacher at Atlanta University. The couple had one son, Norris. Adrienne died of Addison's disease just three months after the home was completed. In 1912 Alonzo married Jessie Gillespie.
The Herndon home is a two-story, 15-room Beaux Arts mansion built by local black craftsmen. The formally composed building is constructed with multi-colored brick, and features a two-story entry portico supported by Corinthian columns. One-story porches to each side of the building echo this theme in brick piers and wooden capitals. An elliptical fanlight over the main entrance and the balustrade above the full entablature of the building's cornice add a distinctly Georgian Revival flavor to this imposing residence. The Herndon Home is a lasting tribute to the hard work and talent of extraordinary African Americans in Atlanta, and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2000.
After Alonzo's death in 1927, Norris assumed the presidency of Atlanta Life Insurance, with Jessie as vice president. During this period the company experienced its greatest growth. Norris lived in the Herndon Home for much of his life, and filled it with many decorative arts from his travels to Europe, as well as keeping his parents original furnishings. Shortly after Jessie died in 1947, Norris established the Alonzo F. and Norris B. Herndon foundation, a charitable trust which operates the home today as a museum recounting this family's phenomenal rise from slavery to leadership of the nation's black business community.
The Herndon Home is located at 587 University Pl., NW, in Atlanta. Guided tours are conducted hourly from 10:00am to 4:00pm. Tuesdays and Thursdays and by appointment only on Saturdays. There is a fee for admission. Call 404-581-9813 or visit the Herndon Home website for further information.
Washington Park Historic District
The Washington Park Historic District is a historically black neighborhood in northwest Atlanta encompassing historic residential, commercial, and community landmark buildings. It is situated two miles west of the central business district of Atlanta. The combination of gridiron and curvilinear streets is a result of the neighborhood having been developed from four separate subdivision plats. One of these plats created Atlanta's first planned black neighborhood, while the other three were abandoned by white developers and adopted by Heman Perry, an early 20th-century black developer. Although Perry did not receive a formal education past the seventh grade, in 1913 he founded one of the largest black-owned companies in the United States, the Standard Life Insurance Company of Atlanta.
The development of the Washington Park area is associated with the history of racial segregation in Atlanta. Prior to 1919, Ashby Street functioned as an early "color line" in the city. The area east of Ashby Street was established as an area for African Americans, and the area west of Ashby Street was established as an area for white settlement. Few white families were interested in residing so close to the historically black Atlanta University campus. Any plans for white settlement west of Ashby Street ended when the general manager of the Parks Department of Atlanta designated Washington Park as the first recreational park for African Americans in 1919. The Atlanta Board of Education re-designated Ashby Street School from white to black in that same year. With these two actions, the area west of Ashby Street was abandoned by white developers and this early "color line" was broken.
The collection of historic residences within the district consists of one- and two-story buildings built between 1919 and 1958 featuring exterior wood clapboard or brick veneer. These close-knit residences are fairly uniformly set back near the street-end of their narrow lots. The architectural types represented within the district include English and Georgian cottages, Georgian, American Foursquare, and the bungalow, the most commonly found type. The architectural styles found include Colonial Revival, English Vernacular, and Craftsman, which is the style most widely represented. There were few commercial buildings located within the Washington Park neighborhood, historically concentrated near the edges of the district at the crossroads of major streets, but many of these stores have been lost or altered. A c. 1930 gas station featuring an office block with a canopy remains, as well as a corner store with a large storefront window oriented towards the intersection. Community landmarks include the William A. Harris Memorial Hospital, the Ashby Street Theater, the Citizen Trust Company West Side Branch bank building, and the E.R. Carter Elementary School (formerly Ashby Street School).
One of the focal points of the historic district is the recreational park. Prior to the construction of Washington Park in 1919, there were no recreational parks in Atlanta available to African Americans. The park started with a gift of six and a half acres and expanded to 25 acres when completed in 1928. It originally included a swimming pool, dance hall, pavilions, and tennis courts. The Washington Park neighborhood has retained many of its landscape features; however, mass transportation projects, modern residential construction and subsidized housing development have caused the loss of some historic fabric.
The Washington Park Historic District is generally bounded by Ashby St., Martin Luther King Jr. Dr., Simpson St. and Ashby Ter. The houses in the district are private residences and are not open to the public.
Booker T. Washington High School
The first black public high school built in Atlanta, Booker T. Washington High School was constructed in the 1920s during the city's major school building program. It was, and still is, an important cultural institution in the black community. The school has produced many outstanding graduates, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., civil rights leader; Romae T. Powell, judge; Dr. Asa Yancy, surgeon; and Dr. Mabel Smith Lott, psychologist. Because of its quality of education, many students came from out of town to attend this school. The school opened in 1924, 52 years after public education started in Atlanta. It remained the only black high school in the city until 1947. The school was named for Booker T. Washington (1856-1915), a Virginia native who had been born a slave and became one of the most influential black leaders and educators in the United States. In 1881 he founded and became the first principal of Tuskegee Institute.
Booker T. Washington High School is a four-story building of reinforced concrete with brick veneer walls built in a medieval-eclectic style. It contains 40 classrooms, administrative suite, library, cafeteria, and science laboratories in the main block. The elaborate main entrance contains five arches in two tiers, using terra cotta and Venetian-style columns. Some original roof tiles and mosaic floors remain, as do original doors, high ceilings, and radiators. A statue of Booker T. Washington by Charles Keck was added at the front entrance in 1927. It is a duplicate of the original at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. In 1938, six classrooms and a laboratory were added as a Works Progress Administration project. A major, half million dollar addition in 1948 filled out the original plan and was designed by the original architect, Eugene C. Wachendorff.
Booker T. Washington High School is located at 45 Whitehouse Dr. in Atlanta. It is still used as a high school, and is not generally open to the public.
Mozley Park Historic District
The Mozley Park Historic District is a typical early 20th-century residential neighborhood, located approximately three miles west of downtown Atlanta. The community is named after the original landowner, Dr. Hiram Mozley, who's heirs inherited the land after his death in 1902. The houses in the district were built over a 20-year period, beginning around 1920 when the basic street arrangements were completely mapped. The houses built in the oldest section of the neighborhood are Folk Victorian cottages and Craftsman bungalows built on small lots with varied setbacks and no driveways. There have been modest changes to the houses, including new awnings, siding, and rear additions. The overall neighborhood plan is that of a gridiron, typical of many Atlanta neighborhoods. Many of the streets have retained their original granite curbing and narrow sidewalks with hexagonal pavers. Lots are primarily 50 feet wide.
The district also includes the Mozley Park Recreational Area. In 1922, the citizens of Mozley Park and the surrounding area asked the Atlanta City Council to purchase the Mozley estate for a recreation area to serve residents of the southwest side of Atlanta. The Civil War breastworks and trenches that remained on the site were leveled. A park was developed with roadways, landscaped areas, lakes, a swimming pool, and a bathhouse. The only other non-residential building in the district is the Frank L. Stanton Elementary School, named for Georgia's first poet laureate. It was built on a wooded hill adjacent to Mozley Park. The school is a traditional two-story, red-brick building with limestone trim and awning windows. In the 1950s and 1960s, public project developments, including the construction of Interstate 20, altered portions of the landscape in Mozley Park. Some older houses and streets have been demolished. But because of the minimal alterations to the majority of the houses, the neighborhood has maintained its integrity as an early 20th-century residential community.
Mozley Park Historic District is roughly bounded by Westview Dr., West Lake Ave., Seaboard Coast Line Railroad tracks, and Rockmark and Martin Luther King, Jr., drs. The houses in the district are private residences and are not open to the public. Mozley Park at 1565 Martin Luther King, Jr., Dr. is open 6:00am to 11:00pm daily.
West End Historic District
The West End Historic District exemplifies the pattern of growth and development that characterized metropolitan Atlanta during the 19th and early 20th centuries. West End's development began in the 1830s with the establishment of the White Hall Inn at the important crossroads of White Hall (now Lee Street) and Sandtown Roads (later Gordon Street, now Abernathy Boulevard). In the late 1840s, the Macon and Western Railroad line (later Central of Georgia) was established just east of the tavern, which provided easy access to downtown Atlanta, and increased the potential for growth around the White Hall area. Speculators, notably George Washington Adair, John Thrasher and Thomas Alexander, bought lots surrounding the inn anticipating future growth. In 1868 the inhabitants of the area received a charter, and the land speculators began subdividing and promoting the newly incorporated town as the ideal suburb of Atlanta. Adair changed the name of the community to West End, after the "fashionable" theater district in London, England. Adair joined with Richard Peters in 1870 to form the Atlanta Street Railway Company to provide trolley access to his suburb. West End became a desirable suburban community in the 1880s, and grew rapidly in population and prosperity, so that by 1930 there were more than 22,000 residents. Notable residents included E.P. Howell, former Mayor of Atlanta and owner of the Atlanta Constitution newspaper, as well as several authors such as Frank L. Stanton, Madge Bigham and Joel Chandler Harris, known for his Uncle Remus Tales.
West End contains a rich mixture of architectural styles of the types popular in Georgia cities (and throughout the United States) during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The most predominant house type found throughout West End is the Craftsman bungalow, but other significant styles include Queen Anne, Stick Style, Folk Victorian, Colonial Revival, and Neoclassical Revival. In addition to the bungalow, other house types include the gabled ell, New South, Queen Anne, and American Foursquare. The houses are primarily constructed of wood and some of brick. By the 1920s, 50 businesses were clustered at Gordon and Lee streets including branches of Sears, Firestone, Piggly Wiggly, and Goodyear.
By the 1940s, West End was an aging, but still vital community. The West End Businessmen's Association, formed in 1927, later produced and implemented urban renewal projects to stem the exodus of West End citizens to the suburbs. Historically occupied by white residents, by the 1960s the neighborhood had become home to many African Americans. The northern edge of West End became home to many African Americans associated with the Atlanta University Center. The construction of Interstate 20 was part of the urban renewal targeted for the West End, to create greater accessibility to the business district, but in effect it physically separated the black and white areas of the neighborhood. Also part of this renewal were the enlargement of J.E. Brown High School and Peeples Street School and the creation of two new parks. In recent years there has been a resurgence of pride and interest by West End residents. In 1974, they formed the West End Neighborhood Development, Inc. to improve the socioeconomic position of the community and its residents, and increase interest and awareness of the historic neighborhood. The Hammonds House, once home of a prominent Atlanta physician, now houses many 19th-century antiques and a notable collection of African-American art.
West End Historic District, in the southwest section of Atlanta, is roughly bounded by I-20 to the north, Lee St. to the east, White St. to the south, and Langhorn St. to the west. The Hammonds House, located at 503 Peeples St, is open to the public Tuesday-Friday from 10:00am to 6:00pm; Saturday-Sunday from 1:00pm to 5:00pm. Call 404-752-8730 for more information.
Joel Chandler Harris House
This country retreat on Snap Bean Farm was once the home of Joel Chandler Harris, author of the Uncle Remus Tales. Harris was also a prominent journalist and editor of the Atlanta Constitution newspaper. Influential black songwriter, author and statesman, James Weldon Johnson, said in 1921 "the Uncle Remus Tales constitute the greatest body of folklore that America has produced." Harris had just published his first Uncle Remus book when he moved to this house in 1881, and did most of his subsequent writing here until his death in 1908.
The building was constructed in 1870 as a simple farmhouse by George Muse, founder of Muse's Clothing, a well-known and established Atlanta store that was in business for more than 100 years. Eleven years later, Harris rented the house and later purchased it in 1883 from his employer at the newspaper. He hired architect George P. Humphreys of the firm of Norrman and Humphreys to remodel the house into a rambling one and one-half story frame cottage in 1884. The residence embodies distinct characteristics of the Queen Anne style, which include an asymmetrical plan with a steeply pitched gable roof and a heavily latticed porch, surrounded by trees and gardens where Harris raised a variety of fruits and vegetables. Harris also built homes for three of his children on lots on the west side of his property facing Lawton Street. Today, two of these remain and are private residences.
More commonly known as the Wren's Nest, today it is the oldest house museum in Atlanta. Largely unchanged since Harris's death, the historic home contains the original Harris furnishings as well as the original paint colors. It is an excellent and rare example of the early Victorian Queen Anne style in the Atlanta area. The house was dubbed the Wren's Nest in 1900, when the Harris children discovered a wren had built its nest inside their mailbox. They promptly erected a second mailbox so the birds would not be disturbed. The Wren's Nest was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1962.
The Joel Chandler Harris Home, more commonly known as the Wren't Nest, is located at 1050 Ralph David Abernathy Blvd., in SW Atlanta, off I-20 at exit 55A. It is open from Tuesday-Saturday, 10:00am to 2:30pm, except major holidays. Guided tours are offered during regular hours. Special storytelling sessions, a reading garden, amphitheater space, and a museum store are all available. Call 404-753-7735 or visit www.wrensnestonline.com for more information.
Adair Park Historic District
The Adair Park Historic District is a residential neighborhood located southwest of downtown Atlanta and adjacent to the Norfolk Southern Railroad tracks. This bungalow suburb was developed from the 1890s to the 1940s, when Atlanta was transitioning from a "railroad town" to a true city. Shortly after the Civil War, land speculators, notably George Washington Adair, John Thrasher and Thomas Alexander, began purchasing land in this area anticipating future growth. To increase the value of this land, Adair joined with Richard Peters in 1870 to form the Atlanta Street Railway Company to provide trolley access to the area. He also established the Atlanta Real Estate Company, and continued purchasing land for development. Adair's company became the largest developer of property in Atlanta before he died in 1889. His sons, George and Forrest, continued the company, and began designing the Adair Park subdivision and selling lots in 1910.
Similar to neighboring West End, the predominate house type within the neighborhood is the bungalow with Craftsmen style detailing. Architectural styles represented include Folk Victorian, Queen Anne, and English Vernacular Revival. There are also a few apartment buildings within the district. Residential front yards within the district are generally small due to narrow lots and houses placed close to the street. Landscaping is informal with grass yards, mature trees and shrubs. There are some sidewalks, granite curbing, steps from the street to the yards, and retaining walls within the district. The few historic commercial buildings are generally one-story freestanding or attached neighborhood stores. Most are constructed of brick and feature storefront bays. Community landmark buildings include the George W. Adair School. Constructed in 1912, the school is a two-story brick building designed in the Academic Gothic Revival style with red brick. Other community buildings include the Stewart Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church South and the Adair Park Baptist Church. The recreational park in the district was established in 1922. Adair Park comprises 20 lots originally designated for houses that were not sold due to the sloped topography and swampy ground. Landscaped with open areas, mature trees, and historic walkways, the park has on its grounds a one-story brick bathhouse built in 1930.
The Adair Park Historic District is roughly bounded by Metropolitan Pkwy., Lexington Ave., Norfolk Southern Railroad and Shelton Ave. The houses in the district are private residences and are not open to the public.
Staff Row and Old Post Area--Fort McPherson
Fort McPherson, one of the most picturesque installations in the South, has been an important military post since its inception in 1889. The fort was named for Union General James McPherson who was killed in the Battle of Atlanta during the Civil War. It has had a variety of missions, including serving as a convalescence center during the Spanish-American War and World War I, and as a processing center during WWII. The buildings in the northeast corner of the property constitute Staff Row and Old Post Area. Built from 1891 to 1910, this district includes a parade field and 40 buildings, including officers' quarters.
All of the buildings retain their original red brick walls and white wood trim. The majority have a common bond brick pattern, arched windows, gabled roofs with wood decking, and hand-seamed metal roofing. A few, such as Buildings 5 and 10, have circular walls with domed roofs. Almost all of the buildings along Staff Row (Buildings 1-20) have intricate brickwork on the chimneys and trim. Classical details are also found in the roof trim with dentilled entablatures. Building 10 stands out most prominently in the district. Designed in the Queen Anne style, it has a rambling plan with several turrets with small-paned windows. It also employs classical elements, including Doric columns. Today, Fort McPherson serves as the Headquarters of the U.S. Army Forces Command.
The Staff Row and Old Post Area is located in the north east corner of Fort McPherson. The Fort is not accessible to the public. For more information visit the Fort's website.
Utoy Cemetery
Utoy Cemetery is a fenced 4 acre suburban cemetery located in Southwest Atlanta on Cahaba Drive SW, behind the old Utoy Primitive Baptist Church (now the Temple of Christ Pentecostal Church).
This location is about 6 miles from the State Capitol in Atlanta, and the Utoy Church has been used for burials from circa 1828. The cemetery contains inscribed tombstones from 1816 to 2010 and is associated with the earliest period of European American settlement (1810s-1870) in what is now Fulton County, Georgia. Utoy Cemetery is one of the oldest of the few identifiable properties to survive from that period.
A number of African American slaves, who were also Utoy Church members, along with their descendants are believed to be buried in the western portion of the cemetery. It is known that at least one Revolutionary War veteran is buried in Utoy Cemetery. Moreover, there are known Confederate, War of 1812, Spanish-American War, and Vietnam conflict veterans, plus Atlanta's first physician buried at Utoy Cemetery.
In 1864, the Utoy church served as a military field hospital for captured Union and wounded Confederate soldiers. There are 23 unknown Confederate soldiers, from Gen. S.D. Lee's Corps of Bate's Division, buried at the Utoy Cemetery. These were among the 35 Confederate casualties of the Battle of Utoy Creek, who died from wounds treated at the Utoy Church field hospital. One additional known casualty of this conflict and eleven known other Confederate veterans are also buried at Utoy. Additionally, a portion of the Rebel defensive line still exists, only a few feet north of the Confederate graves.
On August 1, Union General William T. Sherman sent General John Schofield and his Army of the Ohio to Utoy Creek, one mile northwest of Utoy Cemetery, in an attempt to break Confederate defenses protecting the railroad lines at East Point, upon which the Confederates depended for supplies. While the Union forces reached Utoy Creek on August 2, they did not cross until August 4. The ensuing conflict, which pitted approximately 30,000 Union troops against approximately 8,000 Confederates, would constitute a major victory for the Confederates and a significant loss to the Union Army. Total Union losses, including those killed and wounded, were almost two thousand troops, while Confederate losses included 35 killed and two hundred wounded or captured.
Union casualties were interred here until 1866, when they were moved by the US Quartermaster's Office at Atlanta, to the National Cemetery in Marietta, Georgia. (In the Civil War Era National Cemeteries Travel Itinerary.)
Utoy Primitive Baptist Church, the oldest Baptist Church in present Fulton County, was constituted August 15, 1824, in a log house just west of the present church. The church was moved to its present location in the summer of 1828.
The Georgia Historical Commission has placed a marker at the entrance to the Utoy Cemetery signifying the importance of the Utoy Church and cemetery:
During the 1864 Battle of Utoy Creek, the Confederates established a field hospital for this area at the Utoy Primitive Baptist Church. The primary surgeon was Dr. Joshua Gilbert, Atlanta's first physician, who was assisted by Miss Sarah Hendon as a nurse. Both Dr. Gilbert and Miss Hendon treated both Confederate and captured Union soldiers and are buried in the Utoy Cemetery with DAR and UDC memorial recognition.
Utoy Cemetery is located at 1465 Cahaba Drive, SW , near the intersection of Venetian Dr. and Cahaba Dr. The main entrance is located on Cahaba Dr. The cemetery is open 9:00am to 5:00pm daily. Guided tours are available March-October, by appointment, only; there is a fee. Guide books are also available for self-guided tours. For further information please call 770-925-4299. You can visit their website: http://www.utoycemeteryinc.org/ .
Judge William A. Wilson House
The Judge William Wilson House, a two-story Greek Revival building built over a period of three years from 1856 to 1859, is one if the rare pre-Civil War buildings still standing in Atlanta. Wilson was the son of early settlers in Atlanta. He acquired 1,200 acres from his father in 1839 and created one of the largest plantations in the area. While Wilson was serving with the Georgia Volunteer Infantry during the Civil War, his house was used by Union General William T. Sherman as temporary headquarters during the Battle of Atlanta. After the war, Judge Wilson served as a justice of the inferior court in Fulton County, a representative in the Georgia General Assembly, and as the sheriff of Fulton County.
The exterior walls are constructed of fieldstone and mortar that has been stuccoed. The walls are reported to have been constructed by pouring the materials into a form. A two-story portico with a second floor porch was removed in the early 1960s when a two-story frame addition was constructed on the foundations of the portico. The original front door, now located in the addition, has an over light and sidelights. A screened porch is located on the rear of the building. The interior floor plan is typical of the Greek Revival style with a central stair hall and four rooms on each floor. Other Greek Revival features include molding around the doorways and windows and the high ceilings.
Members of the Wilson family and their slaves are buried in a small cemetery located southwest of the house. A detached kitchen and several slave cabins were once located on the property. The kitchen was southwest of the house, but was demolished due to its deterioration in the 1960s. The slave cabins were located directly south of the house, but the exact location is unknown. The Wilson House remained in the family until 1962 when Dr. Thomas N. Guffin, great grandson of the builder, sold the property to the Holy Family Hospital so that it could be used as nurses' quarters. Most recently is was used as a community center by Southwest Community Hospital.
The Judge William A. Wilson House is located at 501 Fairburn Rd. in Atlanta. It is currently not in use and not open to the public.
Burns Cottage
Burns Cottage, a replica of poet Robert Burns' birthplace in Scotland, was constructed by the Burns Club of Atlanta. The club was organized in 1896 as a social, literary, and memorial society and has held a celebration on the anniversary of Burns' birthday every year since 1898. In 1907 the club began an effort to obtain land and erect a "Burns Cottage" to be used as a clubhouse. A nine-acre tract of land was obtained on what is now Alloway Place. Atlanta architect and member, Thomas H. Morgan, obtained the exact measurements of the original Burns cottage in Alloway, Scotland, and prepared plans for the Atlanta replica. Construction of the Georgia granite building was supervised by Robert McWhirter, a member of the club and a skilled stone mason, and was finished in 1911. The asbestos-shingle roof with shallow eaves has gables that connect directly to the chimneys. Of the three doors on the front of the cottage, only one is used. The small windows reflect the Scottish practice of taxation, in which windows were taxed.
The low, one-story building is generally rectangular, but is slightly curved, as was the original, which accommodated the curve of the road it was built along. The interior of the house is also a close replica of the Scottish cottage, and was divided into the traditional four areas: but, ben, barn, and byre. At the far end is the but, which would have been the kitchen, dining room, and parents' bedroom. Next to the but is the ben, which would have served as the living room and childrens' bedroom. These two rooms are decorated with memorabilia from the life of Robert Burns. The assembly room, which replaces the barn and byre, is used for club meetings. The three fireplaces in the cottage are constructed of random stones with mortar joints raised and rounded. The fireplace in the center of the cottage has an inset stone plaque in memory of the poet. The only remaining outbuilding is a one-story stone caretaker's house, originally a log cabin. It was redesigned in 1969 to bear a closer resemblance to the cottage. The grounds once covered 10 acres and included a dance pavilion, barbeque pit and shed, a tennis court and putting green for club use and for rental to other groups. Changes to Burns Cottage include the rear addition of small, functional kitchen, porch and restrooms. The assembly room's original stone-flagged floor was replaced with a concrete one, a fireplace was added at the far end, and some of the small windows were closed.
Burns Cottage is located at 988 Alloway Pl. in Atlanta. It is privately owned by the Burns Club of Atlanta, and generally not open to the public. For more information please contact the club's president, Dr. James Powell, at 770-471-0725.
Grant Park Historic District
The Grant Park Historic District encompasses one of Atlanta's oldest neighborhoods. The district includes Grant Park, a 131-acre green space and recreational area, and the residential neighborhoods surrounding it. The majority of the buildings are residential but the district also includes school buildings, churches, neighborhood commercial clusters and recreational buildings. Rambling Victorian era mansions and small cottages, early 20th-century bungalows and many brick paved sidewalks characterize the Grant Park neighborhood. A majority of the buildings were built from the late 19th to the early 20th century. Large two-story mansions face the park, more modest two-story, modified Queen Anne, frame dwellings were constructed on surrounding streets, while one-story Victorian era cottages and Craftsman bungalows predominate in the streets to the east of the park. Grant Park's distinctive landscape includes rolling hills and scenic vistas. The neighborhood's grid street pattern and narrow rectangular lots which developed during the 1890s and early 1900s are representative of Atlanta residential plans of this era. The streets are lined with mature trees and there is an extensive sidewalk system, portions of which retain the original brick. Due to the topography, retaining walls are an important landscape feature.
The district also includes remnants of the home of its earliest settler, Colonel Lemuel P. Grant. Grant came to Atlanta in 1840 to participate in the construction of the Georgia Railroad. During the Civil War, Grant was responsible for the design and construction of a system of defensive fortifications for the city of Atlanta. After the war, Grant's business career expanded, as did his land holdings in the southeast quadrant of the city. In 1883, he carved out about 100 acres of his vast estate for a public park which he donated to the city--the first large city park in Atlanta. The city expanded its boundaries to include the park acreage, and purchased 44 additional acres in 1890. In 1909, the Olmsted Brothers, sons and successors to America's pioneer landscape architect and park designer Frederick Law Olmsted, planned numerous improvements for the park. Though considerable erosion has taken place, their influence is still evident.
A section of the main line of the Civil War earthen breastworks and a battery known as Fort Walker are preserved in the southeast corner of Grant Park. The Civil War history of the area is also represented by the Cyclorama, a 360-degree detailed panorama painting of the Battle of Atlanta in 1864. The canvas is heavy gauge cotton duck, 358 feet in circumference and 42 feet in height. It weighs 9,000 pounds. Before the painting was started, intensive study of the terrain of the battle site in East Atlanta was done in the summer of 1885 by a group of 10 German artists working for the American Cyclorama Company in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The artists returned to Milwaukee in the latter part of that year armed with notes, drawings, portraits of commanders on both sides and official maps and papers from the War Department. It was first displayed in Detroit in 1887 then toured major cities of the country until it was purchased by a series of different owners, and finally given to the city of Atlanta in 1897. The marble and granite building that houses it today was constructed in 1921. Between 1934 and 1936, a Works Progress Administration project gave the painting a three-dimensional foreground. Plaster figures, exploded shells, fragments of rails and cross-ties, blasted stumps, simulated grass and bushes, and Georgia clay were added to the base of the canvas. Also within the Cyclorama Building is the Texas, an eight-wheel American type steam locomotive built by Danforth, Cooke, and Company of Patterson, New Jersey and placed in service on the Western and Atlantic Railroad in October 1856. The Texas was made famous as one of the three locomotives that pursued the General, a stolen Confederate locomotive, on April 12, 1862 in what is now known as the Great Locomotive Chase, also known as Andrews's Raid. James J. Andrews, a civilian, and 19 Union soldiers seized the General and three box cars at Big Shanty, now Kennesaw, Georgia, and headed north toward Union lines. Their mission was to destroy the railroad and cut off communications from Atlanta, a major supply point for the Confederacy. The Texas entered the chase north of Big Shanty, ran 51 miles in reverse in pursuit of the locomotive, and towed the damaged General back to Ringgold, Georgia after it was abandoned by Andrews and the Union soldiers. Andrews and seven of his men were hanged by the Confederates as spies. The Texas continued to serve the Confederacy throughout the Civil War, was later renamed the Cincinnati, and from 1890 to 1904 operated on the Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis Railway. Left neglected for many years, it was moved into the basement of the Cyclorama Building in 1927 and finally restored in 1936 and put on public display.
The Grant Park Historic District is bounded by Glenwood and Atlanta aves. and Kelly and Eloise sts. Walking tours are available at 10:00 am on Sundays from March-November. Visit The Atlanta Preservation Centerfor more information. The Grant Park Neighborhood Association also sponsors periodic tours and events, and another organization, the Grant Park Conservancy , is committed to the preservation, restoration, beautification and maintenance of historic Grant Park. The Cyclorama Building, 800 Cherokee Ave., is open daily from 9:30am to 4:30pm and there is a charge for admission; call 404-624-1071 for more information. .
Atlanta Stockade
Built in 1896, the Atlanta Stockade was, at the time, the largest city-built penal complex in the State. The compound consists of a prison, a blacksmith shop, stables, and the remains of a third auxiliary building. The prison is also significant in its use of early concrete, including both poured reinforced concrete and cast concrete block. The Stockade is the second prison built on the site, with the original building constructed primarily of wood. The original purpose of the site, when purchased by the city of Atlanta in 1863, was for a cemetery, but plans changed and it was used as a hospital before becoming a prison.
The prison is a large Neoclassical and Gothic building constructed in four phases. The 1896 portion was a two-story concrete building with steel-reinforced concrete walls. In 1905, it was enlarged on three sides, including the Classical portico with five columns and four four-story Medieval towers, which served as guard stations. A third-floor room was also added on top of the original prison. In 1910, a three-story addition was added to the northeast side. From 1913 to 1916 another three-story dormitory wing was added to the southeast side of the building. Exterior details include alternating textures on the towers and rusticated concrete made to look like stone. Some window and iron bars remain, although no window glass does. The original concrete stairs still exist and interior details include concrete wainscoting and molding in the warden's office.
The Stockade was officially closed by the city in 1924. The Girls' High School was built by December of that year on the grounds of the complex. In 1927, the Atlanta Public School system moved their service center into the former prison. This served as a maintenance and repair facility until 1938. From 1938 until 1962, it was used as a furniture warehouse by the school system. After 1962, the stockade was barely utilized until 1987 when it was converted into low-cost apartment housing.
The Atlanta Stockade, 760 Glenwood Ave., is currently an apartment building and is not open to the public.
Oakland Cemetery
Oakland Cemetery is an 88-acre hilly area in the southeastern section of Atlanta which contains the city's oldest extant burial grounds. Among the 40,000 interred at Oakland are: the unmarked graves of paupers, Confederate and Union soldiers, a Jewish section, an African American section, 24 former Atlanta mayors, six former governors, prominent Atlantans including Gone with the Wind author Margaret Mitchell Marsh and golf great Bobby Jones. The cemetery was established in 1850. A brick wall enclosing the cemetery with a pattern of brick pilasters, recessed panels and corbels was built in 1896. With 50 miles of brick streets and walkways, the grounds of the cemetery are an expression of the 19th-century landscape ideal of a cemetery-park and provide a luxuriant setting for its profusion of Victorian cemetery art.Three of the oldest sections of the cemetery were set aside for specific groups and have visually distinct environments. The Confederate section, occupying six acres of high ground, is marked by an 1873 obelisk and a monument to the unknown dead. The granite monument illustrates a wounded lion lying on a furled Confederate flag. The Jewish section, dating to 1860, is crowded with elaborate monuments and mausolea bearing inscriptions in both Hebrew and English. The black section of the cemetery is on the northern end on sloping ground that looks toward the historic east-side black community. The landscape here is less crowded and the markers generally less elaborately detailed.
The marble and granite gravestones throughout the cemetery range from simple, unadorned flat granite markers to grandly scaled obelisks and mausoleums. Both round and low-pitched arched stones with a variety of tympanum motifs dating from the mid-19th century are particularly prevalent. Markers in the shape of urns, occasionally displaying a common 18th-century motif of winged cherub or soul figure are used widely. Other notable and typically Victorian figure motifs found in the cemetery include a sleeping child or cherub in a shell, the weeping wife or mother bowed in grief with palm leaf or laurel wreath in hand, angel figures and the solemn classical figure who may be clinging to a cross. Widespread marker forms include anchors bound with rope, rough hewn rocks covered with ivy and lilies, tree trunks from which all limbs have been removed, crosses bedecked with flowers and portrait stones.
Oakland Cemetery is located at 248 Oakland Ave., NE, near the intersection of Boulevard St. and Memorial Dr. where Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. ends. The main entrance is located on Oakland St., off Memorial Ave. The Visitor's Center is located in the Bell Tower Building, and is open 9:00am to 5:00pm daily. Guided tours are available March-October, Saturdays at 10:00am and 2:00pm, and Sundays at 2:00pm (except holidays); there is a fee. Guide books are also available for self-guided tours. For further information please call 404-688-2107 or visit www.oaklandcemetery.com
Cabbagetown District
The Cabbagetown District, east of downtown Atlanta, originally consisted of the Fulton Bag and Cotton Mill and the housing built for the factory workers. The mill is a complex of buildings constructed primarily between 1881 and 1922. The main factory buildings are five-story brick buildings designed in a Neo-Romanesque style. Two of the three original mill buildings remain today. Founded by Jacob Elsas, the mill manufactured standard-sized cotton bags at a time when most of the cotton in the South was being shipped to the North to be processed.
Because this area of Atlanta was sparsely populated in the late 19th century, the owners of the mill company decided to erect housing for its employees. Housing along the streets was built at different times. The houses, situated on very small, narrow lots, vary in type from shotgun cottages to more sophisticated bungalows. Many of the houses have Victorian ornamentation that is mostly evident in their porches, doors, and windows. The first housing section, known as the "Factory Lot," was built around 1881 but is no longer extant. The oldest remaining houses were built between 1886 and 1892 along Reinhardt Street. Much of the housing was without plumbing and electricity until well into the 20th century. Hydrants located on back porches and the outhouses were replaced with indoor plumbing in the 1940s. Kerosene lamps and coal heaters were replaced in 1950 when the houses were wired for lights. A park known as "Noah's Ark" due to a nearby large, one-story apartment building provided recreational space for the community. There was also a baseball field in Cabbagetown, known as "Red Hill" because of the red clay of the field.
The mill maintained the entire neighborhood and its lawns. It also provided garbage, security, medical, dental, library and nursery services for its employees. Only when the Elsas family sold the mill in 1957 did most of these services end. At the time the mill was sold, the residences were offered to their respective tenants. Those buildings not bought were sold in groups to non-residents. The mill itself was closed in 1977 and remained vacant until the mid-1990s when the complex was converted into loft apartments. Occasional commercial enterprises are found through the village, most of which are long-established family-run stores that serve the immediate community and its needs.
The Cabbagetown District is bounded by Oakland Cemetery, Boulevard and Pearl sts., Memorial Dr., and the Georgia Railroad tracks. The houses in the district are private residences and are not open to the public.
Sweet Auburn Historic District
Concentrated along a short mile and a half of Auburn Avenue, the Sweet Auburn Historic District reflects the history, heritage and achievements of Atlanta's African Americans. The name Sweet Auburn was coined by John Wesley Dobbs, referring to the "richest Negro street in the world." Like other black communities throughout the country, Sweet Auburn's success was intricately tied to the residential patterns forced on African Americans during the early 20th century--the result of restrictive laws in southern states which enforced segregation of the races, known as Jim Crow laws. It was here that many African Americans established businesses, congregations, and social organizations.
Several churches located along the avenue, such as Big Bethel AME and First Congregational, helped build and maintain the heritage of the street. The Royal Peacock Club provided an elegant setting where many African Americans could perform and bring the changing styles of black popular music to Atlanta. Originally called the Top Hat Club when it opened in 1938, the club hosted local talent and national acts such as B.B. King, the Four Tops, the Tams and Atlanta's own Gladys Knight. One of the many significant commercial buildings within the district is the Atlanta Life Insurance Company. The second largest black insurance company in the United States, Atlanta Life Insurance was founded in 1905 by Alonzo Herndon, a former slave from Walton County, Georgia. The company steadily grew so that by 1910, there were more than 42 branch offices. The central building of the Atlanta Life Insurance Company complex is a Beaux Arts building facing Auburn Avenue. The district also includes the Rucker Building, Atlanta's first black-owned office building, constructed in 1904 by businessman and politican Henry A. Rucker. The Atlanta Daily World, the first black-owned daily newspaper, was founded here in 1928.
Sweet Auburn was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1976. However, like so many other inner-city neighborhoods, Sweet Auburn fell victim to lack of investment, crime and abandonment, compounded by highway construction that split it in two. In 1992 the National Trust for Historic Preservation recognized that it was one of America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places. The Historic District Development Corporation (HDDC) was formed to turn the trend around, starting with houses surrounding the birth home of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and working outward. HDDC designed Sweet Auburn's renewal to improve the community without pricing lower-income residents out of the neighborhood. Since 1994, HDDC has built and rehabilitated more than 110 single-family homes and more than 50 units of affordable rental housing. HDDC is are now focusing on the renewal of the district's commercial area.
Sweet Auburn Historic District is located along Auburn Avenue, generally between Courtland St. and I-75/85 in downtown Atlanta. Walking tour maps are available through the Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau, 404-222-6688. For more information contact the Friends of Sweet Auburn. Group walking tours are also available. Call 404-688-3353 or visit the Atlanta Preservation Center for more information.
Martin Luther King, Jr., National Historic Site
This traditionally black neighborhood of several blocks in Atlanta includes Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birth home, the Ebenezer Baptist Church where he was a pastor, and his gravesite. Martin Luther King, Jr., was the nation's most prominent leader in the 20th-century struggle for civil rights. Born in 1929, he excelled as a student and graduated from Atlanta's Morehouse College in 1948. Also in 1948 he was ordained at the Ebenezer Baptist Church. Following his ordination, he became Assistant Pastor of Ebenezer. He later studied at the Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania, then graduate studies at the University of Boston. In 1954, King became the pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. Following Rosa Parks' refusal to move to the back of a bus in Montgomery, Martin Luther King, Jr., led the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott from 1955 to 1956 (381 days). In 1957 he was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), an organization formed to provide new leadership for the now burgeoning civil rights movement. He moved back to Atlanta in 1960 and was co-pastor with his father at the Ebenezer Baptist Church while still President of the SCLC. Martin Luther King, Jr., worked tirelessly to assure the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He was arrested 30 times for his participation in civil rights activities and delivered some of the most famous speeches of the 20th century including his speech at the March on Washington in 1963, his acceptance speech of the Nobel Peace Prize, his last sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church, and his final "Mountaintop" speech in Memphis. King was assassinated in 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was helping striking sanitation workers.
Martin Luther King, Jr., was born in a two-story Queen Anne style house at 501 Auburn Avenue, in a neighborhood known as Sweet Auburn. The house has a one-story partial front and side porch with scroll cut woodwork trim, two porthole windows, a shingled gabled end, and a side bay. The porch sits on an enclosed brick foundation. Dr. King was born in an upstairs middle room on January 15, 1929 and lived here until 1941. The Ebenezer Baptist Church, where for eight years he shared the pulpit with his father, is a short walk away at the corner of Auburn Avenue and Jackson Street. It is a three-story red brick building detailed in stone and has several groupings of stained glass windows. Construction of the church began in 1914 and was completed in 1922. Across from the church at 449 Auburn is the Martin Luther King, Jr., Center for Nonviolent Social Change, Inc., which continues King's legacy and work. King's gravesite occupies most of the cleared lot east of the Ebenezer Baptist Church to Boulevard Street. In 1976 a memorial park was installed around the marble crypt. The park consists primarily of a brick and concrete plaza with arch-covered walkway and chapel partially surrounding a reflecting pool. In the center of the pool, on a raised pedestal rests the King crypt. On it is engraved the inscription: "Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. 1929-1968, 'Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, I'm free at last." This National Historic Landmark historic district is also featured in our We Shall Overcome: Historic Places of the Civil Rights Movement travel itinerary.
The Martin Luther King, Jr., National Historic Site, administered by the National Park Service, includes King's birth home, church and grave. The National Park Service's Visitor Center, at 450 Auburn Ave. features exhibits about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Civil Rights movement. The park is open daily from 9:00am to 5:00pm; from Memorial Day weekend to Labor Day open until 6:00 pm; closed Thanksgiving Day, December 25, and January 1. Call 404-331-5190, or visit the website for more information. The surrounding almost 70-acre Martin Luther King, Jr., National Historic Site and Preservation District includes the Sweet Auburn Historic District.
Inman Park
Inman Park was the first planned residential suburb developed in Atlanta. Its promoter, Joel Hurt, was one of the city's most important early builders. Improvements to the district, such as streets, a park, part of Atlanta's first electric streetcar line, landscaping and tree planting were well underway by the time the first lots were put up for auction in 1889, officially opening the development of the Inman Park suburb. Subsequently, more land was acquired and more lots subdivided by Joel Hurt's company, the East Atlanta Land Company, and Samuel Inman, the financier and cotton broker for whom the area was named. Inman Park was for some years occupied by many prominent Atlanta families who built typical late 19th-century Victorian homes on its picturesque landscaped streets. The founder of the Coca-Cola Company, Asa G. Candler, and his brother Warren A. Candler, a bishop in the Methodist Church and supporter of Emory University, both lived in the district. Among other important citizens of Atlanta who also lived in the neighborhood were Wilbur Fiske Glenn, an influential Methodist minister for whom Glenn Memorial Church on the Emory University campus is named; George King, founder of Atlanta's King Hardware; former Governors Allen Candler and Alfred W. Colquitt; Robert Winship, founder of Winship Machine Company; Ernest Woodruff, financier and officer of the Coca-Cola Company and his son Robert, who later assumed a prominent role in the Atlanta community.
Found in this historic district are examples of Queen Anne architecture, Colonial Revival, and Shingle Style homes and bungalows. Some notable buildings include the Jacobean Revival home designed by Atlanta architect W. T. Downing, called the Ernest Woodruff House, built in 1902. At the intersection of Euclid and Elizabeth streets are the Joel Hurt House and the Asa G. Candler House. The Hurt House, a brick building also designed by Downing, has a landscape designed by the Olmsted Brothers, the sons and successors of Frederick L. Olmsted, and the home itself reflects aspects of the Prairie School style. The Candler House is a monumentally scaled, red brick home articulated by white wooden details including a two-story Ionic columned portico, arched windows and doors, and ornamental cornices. Distinctive landscape features also characterize Inman Park; in addition to the two triangles of open space at the intersection of Euclid and Edgewood avenues, known as the Triangle and the Delta, Springvale Park provides a large corridor of green space in the center of the area. Inman Park's landscape designer was James Forsyth Johnson.
Inman Park underwent a slow decline for much of the 20th century until about 1970 when area residents founded the Inman Park Restoration, Inc. Inman Park is historically important because it provides an Atlanta example of the typical late 19th-century picturesque suburb conceived in a form similar to Frederick Law Olmsted's earlier influential Riverside outside of Chicago. Inman Park later influenced the growth of other Atlanta suburbs in the late 19th century.
Inman Park lies near the eastern boundary of the city of Atlanta and is due east of the financial center called Five Points. The district is roughly bounded by Lake, Hurt and DeKalb aves. and Krog St. The houses in the district are private residences and are not open to the public. Visit the Inman Park website for further information on the neighborhood. Walking tours are available at 2:00 pm on Sundays from March-November. Twilight tours are also availalbe from April-October. Visit the Atlanta Preservation Center for more information.
Inman Park--Moreland Historic District
The Inman Park--Moreland Historic District is comprised primarily of residential buildings that date from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It also includes two historic schools, two historic churches and several commercial buildings. Architectural styles within the district include Colonial Revival, Beaux Arts, American Foursquare, Bungalow/Craftsmen, and Commercial. Most buildings are one- or two-story residences, constructed of wood or masonry, with low overhanging roofs, front gables, dormer windows, and front porches. Noted Atlanta architect Willis Franklin Denny (1874-1905) designed several of the buildings including the Kriegshaber House, located at 292 Moreland Avenue, listed individually in the National Register of Historic Places.
The district also stands as testimony to the incrementally developed Atlanta suburb. This type of suburban development, comprised of several related subdivisions, is characteristic of much of Atlanta's early 20th-century suburban growth. It contrasts with the contemporaneously planned suburbs like Ansley Park, Druid Hills, and the adjacent Inman Park. This district got its name from its association with Major Asbury F. Moreland, a primary property owner in the district in the late 19th century. His property, known as "Moreland Park," was subdivided in the early 1900s. In addition, the Copenhill Land Company developed a subdivision between 1895 and 1920, in the area around Copen Hill, the most elevated rise of ground in the district.
The Inman Park--Moreland Historic District also includes the shopping area known as "Little Five Points," which was officially designated in the early 1920s as a commercial area by the City of Atlanta. The commercial buildings, most of which share a common party wall and have storefront windows and tile roofs, are located on Euclid and Moreland avenues at the Little Five Points intersection and on North Highland Avenue near Colquitt Avenue. As the population grew in east Atlanta in the area where the trolley lines converged, Little Five Points became one of the earliest major regional shopping centers. The southern part of the district along Moreland, Austin, Alta, and Euclid avenues is the site of the former Moreland Park, a popular resort in the 1880s and 1890s.
The Inman Park--Moreland Historic District is bordered on the north and northwest around Seminole, Cleburne, and North Highway aves. The houses in the district are private residences and are not open to the public, but the commercial shops are open to the public during normal business hours. Visit the Inman Park website for further information on the neighborhood. Directly west of Albion Ave. is the Jimmy Carter Library and Museum.
National NuGrape Company
The NuGrape Company of America began in Atlanta in 1921 as a soft drink company. It was an innovator in the 1920s by bottling its own drinks, now a standard in the beverage industry. The National NuGrape Company building, built in 1937, served as the national headquarters for more than 600 bottlers of NuGrape around the country and housed the advertising office and home laboratory for the company. The syrup was also made here and stored in 50-gallon oak barrels. The National NuGrape Company building is a three-story, wood-framed Stripped Classical style industrial edifice. With its brick pilasters and simple cornices, this building incorporates understated classical detailing on an otherwise unadorned facade. This style represents a transition between classically influenced architecture, with pediments and pilasters, and modern architecture, which is characterized by plain wall surfaces and little or understated stylistic detailing.
The exterior features a flat roof, stone cornice cap, blond brick on the front and west facades, red brick on the rear and east facades, steel-framed tilt factory windows with multiple lights, and brick pilasters with stone caps. The west facade has similar detailing as the front. The east facade has single-door entrances on each level to provide emergency exits by metal stairs. The bridge connecting the building to the rail spur is on the third level. Originally, the floor plan consisted of a first floor lobby, offices on the first and second floors and two large open spaces each on the first and third floors. The interior has been altered to consist of a first floor lobby and a lengthwise central hall on all floors with loft-style apartments.
The National Nugrape Company used the building from 1937 to 1971 when it was sold to Ryco Printing Company. After Ryco left the building in 1990, it was converted into apartments.
The National NuGrape Company building, 794 Ralph McGill Blvd., contains private residences and is not open to the public.
Ford Motor Company Assembly Plant
The Ford Motor Company Assembly Plant is an outstanding example of early 20th-century commercial and industrial architecture in Atlanta. It is one of the earliest automobile assembly plants in the Southeast and represents the beginnings of the automobile industry in Atlanta. As a result of Ford's pioneering decision to decentralize its production facilities, it is also significant for serving as the headquarters of the company's southeastern operations from 1915 until 1942.
In 1907, four years after the Ford Motor Company was founded, the automobile maker opened its first small sales office in Atlanta in a converted harness shop. Because of the high volume of sales in the city, Atlanta was selected as a regional branch two years later. In 1914, Ford made the decision to concentrate its sales, service, administration, assembly, and shipping operations for four southern states in Atlanta. At the height of its operation in this plant, Ford sold an annual average of 22,000 vehicles. Model T's (1915-1927), Model A's (1927-1932), and V-8's (1932-1937) were assembled in this building. After selling the building to the War Department in 1942, another plant was constructed in the Atlanta suburb of Hapeville in 1946 to continue Ford's industrial presence.
Built in 1914, the assembly plant is a four-story, rectangular industrial building. The north and west sides are veneered with face brick and trimmed with terra cotta and colored tile. On the south and east elevations, the concrete frame is respectively faced with common brick and left exposed. Character-defining windows, which occupy much of the plant's wall surface, are large, multi-paned, metal, industrial sash. The building's finished sides are detailed with brick pilasters between bays and a prominent terra-cotta stringcourse dividing the first from the upper floors. The roof is flat, and from it, project three elevator towers, a water tower, a central gabled clerestory that runs the length of the factory section, and a rooftop office or work area located in the southwest corner.
Throughout the interior, rows of concrete columns with mushroom-shaped capitals support the concrete slab floors. It is divided into a showroom/office area at the front end on the first floor and a factory area to the rear. The front entrance leads directly into the large, centrally placed showroom, which retains its original plaster walls. An elevator and a stairway finished with marble treads and risers, ceramic-tile landings, and a cast-iron railing are located to the west of the showroom. A heavily reinforced floor along the central portion of the second level supported a rail bed and allowed rail cars to be brought into the building and directly under the craneway for unloading.
In 1942, the building was sold to the War Department for use as an Army-Air Force Storage Depot and Offices of the Third Air Service Area Command. Several alterations were made at this time, including partitioning much of the open space and flooring over the light well at both the third and fourth levels. Retail shops and apartments now occupy the building.
The Ford Motor Company Assembly Plant, 699 Ponce de Leon Ave., has retail stores on the street level open during normal business hours.
Callanwolde
Callanwolde was originally the home of Charles Howard Candler, eldest son of Asa Candler, who succeeded his father as president and director of the family-founded Coca-Cola Company. It was named after Callen Castle in Ireland which was given to a Candler ancestor by the English crown in the 17th century. Built in the early 20th century (1917-1921), Callanwolde was designed by Henry Hornbostel of New York. Hornbostel also created the campus plan and several buildings for Emory University. From 1929 until his death in 1957, Charles Candler served as board chairman of Emory University.
Callanwolde is a successful amalgamation of 19th-century Gothic Revivalism and 20th-century ideas of form and function. The front facade of this two and one-half story home has medieval half-timber rhythmical design across the upper stories, crenellated bays and Tudor arches. It was constructed with modern materials of poured concrete and steel and a rubble base of tile covered by stucco. Embodying the ideals of an open floorplan, most of the rooms have access to the great hall on each floor. The great hall is paneled in walnut obtained from W. M. Healy of Southern Railway, a friend of Candler. This wide paneling was used in Pullman cars and is unobtainable today. Two rear wings originally created an arcaded courtyard. In the 1980s, this inner courtyard was completely enclosed to provide more space for special events at the arts center (its current function). Originally a one-lane bowling alley was located in the basement; however, this area is now used as a pottery studio. The home has an Aeolian music system especially designed for the house and installed during its construction. Consisting of seven divisions, the instrument is contained in four separately constructed chambers strategically located throughout the house. Decorative ornamentation in the ceiling and walls of the mansion conceals the chambers. The most spectacular of these ornamentations, a system of rib vaults elaborated with an intricately designed pierced tracery constructed of pre-cast masonry grillwork, is located in the ceiling above the grand staircase. Controlled from the console located in the first floor great hall, all chambers can be utilized simultaneously or separately, permitting selective projection of sound to all major rooms in the mansion. While basically an electric powered wind pipe organ, simulation of five or six different instruments can be presented from the keyboard of the console.
Callanwolde was used as the Candler home until 1959; it has since served in the educational program of the First Christian Church of Atlanta, as an artist studio, and now, the Callanwolde Fine Arts Center.
Callanwolde is located at 980 Briarcliff Road, NE in Atlanta. The Callanwolde Fine Arts Center frequently hosts concerts, performances, readings and other special events. The second floor art gallery features exhibits by local artists, and is open free of charge Monday - Friday, 10:00am to 8:00pm, Saturday 10:00am to 3:00pm. Call 404-872-5338 for more information or visit the website.
Druid Hills Historic District
The residences built in the Druid Hills Historic District during the early 20th century are among the finest examples of period architecture in the Atlanta metropolitan area and the State of Georgia. These period houses range from mansions to bungalows. The district includes a wide variety of eclectic and revivalist architectural styles, with the Georgian, Tudor, Jacobean, and Italian Renaissance represented in the greatest numbers. Druid Hills is also one of the major works by the eminent landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted and his successors, the Olmsted Brothers, and their only such large-scale work in Atlanta. Druid Hills is important as the home of many of Atlanta's citizens who were prominent in early 20th century political, financial, commercial, professional, cultural and academic affairs. As the second major suburb of Atlanta, Druid Hills had a profound effect on the direction of future suburban development.
During the late 1880s, Joel Hurt conceived of an "ideal residential suburb" to be developed at the future site of the Druid Hills Historic District. Hurt, a prominent Atlanta businessman and developer, helped create Inman Park, Atlanta's first suburb, in the 1880s. Between 1889 and 1892, Hurt organized the Kirkland Land Company, and in 1892 Hurt secured Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr.(1822-1903) , as a planner and designer for the new suburb. Olmsted, nationally known for his work at South Park in Chicago, Prospect Park in Brooklyn, and the grounds of the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was to prepare preliminary overall plans and designs. By 1893, Olmsted's preliminary plan called for a broad, curving, divided major avenue (Ponce de Leon Ave.), with a succession of public parks in the median, bordered by large estates. Financial difficulties slowed work on implementing Olmsted's plan. In 1905, the Olmsted Brothers submitted a final plan, and construction began. In 1908, the Kirkland Land Company and its holdings in Druid Hills were sold to the Druid Hills Company, whose president was Coca-Cola magnate Asa Candler. The final work was completed in 1936. Aside from Candler and his family, other prominent residents of Druid Hills included John Ray Patillo, president of the Patillo Lumber Company, and William D. Thompson, dean of the Emory University Law school. Some of the most distinguished early 20th-century architects practicing in Atlanta designed houses in Druid Hills, including Walter T. Downing, Arthur Neal Robinson, Henry Hornbostel and Neil Reid. The Druid Hills Historic District also incorporates in its entirety the previously listed Druid Hills Parks and Parkways Historic District.
Druid Hills is roughly bounded by the Fulton County line on the west, Briarcliff Rd. to the northwest, just over the Emory Rd. line on the north and following the southside of Emory Rd. The boundary cuts south and juts east around the Fernbank Forest and Recreational Center, then cuts east and south along tracks of the Seaboard Coast Line. South it is bordered by North Ave. and the Atlanta City Boundary. The houses in the district are private residences and are not open to the public, but there is more information available through the Druid Hills Civic Association. Walking tours are available at 10:00 am on Saturdays only from March to November. Twilight tours are also available. Visit the Atlanta Preservation Center for more information.
Emory University District
Emory University was founded in 1915 as a Methodist school in conjunction with the strong support of Atlanta's Candler family and their Coca-Cola wealth. The campus of Emory University was designed by Henry Hornbostel of New York. Here Hornbostel created a natural garden campus with Georgia-marble buildings of modern Italianate design. The landscape of the campus is tied to that of the Olmsted-designed residential community of Druid Hills, adjacent to the campus. Prior to the establishment of Emory, Asa Candler disputed the extent of control the Methodist Church should have over Vanderbilt University before he would contribute funds to that institution. As a result Candler initially endowed Emory with a million dollars as well as contributing property in Druid Hills for the campus. The university was an outgrowth of Emory College at Oxford, which started as a Georgia Conference Methodist Manual Labor School in 1834. Asa Candler's brother Warren Candler, a Methodist bishop, served as the first chancellor of Emory.
In his design for the Emory campus and its buildings, Hornbostel incorporated the natural growth of dogwood and pine trees with the winding roads and small bridges over ravines--in harmony with the surrounding landscape of Druid Hills. The Emory buildings, characteristic of Hornbostel, were designed with a modern approach to a traditional style. The use of the block form buildings with wide eaves and arched windows in combination with pink and gray Georgia marble in a random "quilt-like" pattern suggests the forms of Italian villas and buildings characteristic of Renaissance Tuscany. By using indigenous materials, such as the culls of quarried Georgia marble slabs, and by integrating the building into the landscape, Hornbostel created a series of buildings that complimented their surroundings.
The Emory University District is roughly bounded by N. Decatur Rd, Oxford Rd, Dickey Dr., Kilgo Cir., and Asbury Dr. The campus, comprising nine different colleges, is generally open to the public; tours are not offered regularly but can be arranged through the admission offices. The Michael C. Carlos Museum at 571 Kilgo St. is located on Emory University campus and houses a permanent collection of over 15,000 objects, spanning nearly 9,000 years from prehistoric cultures to the 20th century. Visit the Emory University website for further information.
Stone Mountain Historic District
Within the metropolitan Atlanta area, the Stone Mountain Historic District is a rare surviving historic railroad town. This intact community contains nearly every major element of a railroad town in Georgia, including the homes of the town founders, the rail line, central business district, residential neighborhoods, and community landmark buildings. These collectively represent nearly a century and half of local growth and development. The town is located at the base of Stone Mountain, a granite outcropping that rises 700 feet above the surrounding terrain and 1,683 feet above sea level. Although the mountain is not included with the district boundaries, it is visible from points throughout the town and is a key component of the setting of the historic district. Granite from the mountain was relied on as a major construction material for the city.
The historic district comprises residential, commercial, and community landmark buildings constructed from the 1830s through 1950, and includes a variety of architectural styles and building types. The Georgia Railroad line runs north to south through the center of the historic district. The commercial area at the center of the district consists mostly of a continuous row of one- and two-story commercial buildings on the east side of Main Street, opposite the rail line. The commercial buildings, largely built from granite or brick, include filling stations, arcaded blocks and commercial blocks. The historic houses are prevalently bungalows with Craftsman style ornament and English Vernacular Revival style houses built mostly in the first decades of the 20th century. Twelve buildings, constructed as residences, are now serving commercial functions. Residential buildings constructed in the earlier decades of the 19th century were built in the Greek Revival style. The second half of that century saw less ornate architectural styles. Houses from this period may be characterized as Folk Victorian. Craftsman style houses were built throughout Stone Mountain from the late 19th century to the first decades of the 20th century. Elements of the Craftsman style are exposed rafter ends, porches supported by massive wood supports or brick piers, decorative brackets and windows organized in pairs and bands. Shermantown, located south of downtown, is a historically black neighborhood within the district. Shermantown features small frame houses on small lots, narrow streets and community landmarks such as churches and stores. Of particular distinction is the Rock Gym, a granite gymnasium that was built by the Works Progress Administration c. 1930. It features granite buttresses and sills and an open truss roof. Its open plan remains intact and the building now serves as a recreation center.
Stone Mountain Historic District is located in east central DeKalb County, 10 miles east of Atlanta on route 10. The district is roughly bounded by Stone Mountain Cemetery, Stone Mountain Memorial Park, Lucile St., CSX Railroad, VFW Dr., and the city limits. It contains several commercial shops which are open to the public during normal business hours, and many private residences which are not open to the public. Stone Mountain Park is not within the historic district, but is located adjacent to the town. For more information on Stone Mountain Park visit www.stonemountainpark.com.
Learn More
By clicking on one of these links, you can go directly to a particular section:
Bibliography for Atlanta, Georgia
Children's Literature
Links to Atlanta Tourism and Preservation
Links to Sites featured in the Atlanta Travel Itinerary
Bibliography for Atlanta, Georgia
Ambrose, Andy. Atlanta: An Illustrated History. Athens, Georgia: Hill Street Press, 2003.
Bayor, Ronald H. Race and the Shaping of Twentieth-Century Atlanta. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996.
Castel, Albert E. Decision in the West: The Atlanta Campaign of 1864. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansa, 1992.
Cohen, Rodney T. Black Colleges of Atlanta. Charleston, South Carolina: Arcadia Publishing, 2000.
Craig, Robert M. and Richard Guy Wilson. Atlanta Architecture: Art Deco to Modern Classic, 1929-1959. Gretna, Louisiana: Pelican Publishing Co., 1995.
Davis, Stephen. Atlanta Will Fall: Sherman, Joe Johnston, and the Yankee Heavy Battalions (American Crisis Series, No. 3). Wilmington, Delaware: Scholarly Resources, 2001.
Galloway, Tammy Harden. The Inman Family: An Atlanta Family from Reconstruction to World War I. Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 2002.
Gournay, Isabelle, Gerald Sams and Dana White AIA Guide to the Architecture of Atlanta. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1993.
Greene, Melissa Fay. The Temple Bombing. Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley, 1996.
Hunter, Tera W. To 'Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women's Lives and Labors After the Civil War. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1997.
Kemp, Kathryn W. God's Capitalist: Asa Candler of Coca-Cola. Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 2002.
Kuhn, Cliff, Harlon E. Joye, and E. Bernard West. Living Atlanta: An Oral History of the City, 1914-1948. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1990.
Kuhn, Cliff. Contesting the New South Order: The 1914-1915 Strike at Atlanta's Fulton Mills. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001.
Kurtz,Wilbur G. Historic Atlanta: A Brief Story of Atlanta and Its Landmarks. Atlanta: Cherokee Publishing Company, 1991.
McMurry, Richard M. Atlanta 1864: Last Chance for the Confederacy (Great Campaigns of the Civil War Series). New York: Bison Books Corp, 2001.
Mason, Herman, and Herman Mason Jr. African-American Entertainment in Atlanta (Images of America). Charleston, South Carolina: Arcadia Publishing, 1998.
Miles, Jim. Fields of Glory: A History and Tour Guide of the Atlanta Campaign. Nashville: Rutledge Hill Press, 1995.
Mitchell, Margaret. Gone With the Wind. New York: Warner Books, 1936, 1994.
Pomerantz, Gary M. Where Peachtree Meets Sweet Auburn: The Saga of Two Families and the Making of Atlanta. New York: Scribner, 1996.
Roth, Darlene, and Andy Ambrose. Metropolitan Frontiers: A Short History of Atlanta. Atlanta: Longstreet Press, 1996.
Roth, Darlene R., and Lori Parks. Greater Atlanta: An Illustrated History of the Region, 2000.
Russell, James Michael. Atlanta, 1847-1890: City Building in the Old South and the New. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988.
Thompson, Joseph F., and Robert Isbell. Atlanta: A City of Neighborhoods. Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 1993.
Children's Literature
Beatty, Patricia. Be Ever Hopeful, Hannalee. Mahwah, New Jersy: Troll Communications L.L.C., 1990.
Harris, Joel Chandler. The Complete Tales of Uncle Remus. Boston, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2002.
Kent, Deborah. Atlanta. New York: Scholastic Library Publishing, 2001.
Snow, Pegeen. Atlanta. EngleWood Cliffs, New Jersey: Silver Burdett Press, 1989.
Links to Atlanta Tourism and Preservation
Atlanta History Center
Offering exhibits, programs and an extensive archival collection that encompass the city's history, the Atlanta History Center is also the caretaker of four historic properties, including the Tullie Smith House and Swan House.
Atlanta Preservation Center -- www.preserveatlanta.com
The city's only independent advocate for historic buildings, neighborhoods and landscapes, this non-profit organization has worked with government, business and community leaders to preserve more than 100 endangered residential and commercial structures and neighborhoods. They also offer regular walking tours of many neighborhoods in the city.
Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau
A site dedicated to vacationing, dining, shopping and transportation in Atlanta.
Historic Preservation Division of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources
This office of the Georgia State government promotes the preservation and use of historic places for a better Georgia. Properties are nominated to the National Register through their office.
Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation
This local non-profit promotes an appreciation of Georgia's diverse historic resources and provides for their protection and use to preserve, enhance and revitalize Georgia's communities.
Georgia Historical Society -- www.georgiahistory.com
One of the oldest historical organizations in the nation, the Georgia Historical Society is a private, non-profit organization that serves as the historical society for the people of Georgia.
Georgia Department of Industry Trade & Tourism
Discover what the state of Georgia has to offer at the website for the state's Department of Travel. Find out about upcoming events, accomodations and entertainment or order a brochure before you travel to Atlanta in person.
Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park Administrative History
Jimmy Carter Library and Museum
Part of the Presidential Library system administered by the National Archives and Records Administration, this research facility and a museum contains Carter's White House papers, documents, memoranda, over a million photographs, and hundreds of hours of audio and visual tape.
Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record (HABS/HAER)
The HABS/HAER program documents important architectural, engineering and industrial sites throughout the United States and its territories. Their collections, including a number of Atlanta sites, are archived at the Library of Congress and available online. You can view these by clicking on the link above and entering the search term "Atlanta."
National Trust for Historic Preservation
Learn about the programs of, and membership in, the oldest national nonprofit preservation organization.
Historic Hotels of America
A feature of the National Trust for Historic Preservation's Heritage Traveler program that provides information on historic hotels and package tours in the vicinity of this itinerary.
National Park Service Office of Tourism
National Parks have been interwoven with tourism from their earliest days. This website highlights the ways in which the National Park Service promotes and supports sustainable, responsible, informed, and managed visitor use through cooperation and coordination with the tourism industry.
National Scenic Byways Program
This website, maintained by the U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, includes information on state and nationally designated byway routes throughout America based on their archeological, cultural, historic, natural, recreational, and scenic qualities. Visit the America's Byways Russell-Brasstown National Scenic Byway website for more ideas.
Links to Sites featured in the Atlanta Travel Itinerary
Ansley Park Historic DistrictAtlanta Biltmore Hotel and Biltmore Apartments
Atlanta City Hall
Atlanta University Center
Brookwood Hills Historic District
Callanwolde
Castleberry Hill Historic District
Central Presbyterian Church
Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus
Crescent Apartments/ Margaret Mitchell House and Museum
Druid Hills Historic District
Emory University
Fairlie-Poplar Historic District
Fort McPherson
Fox Theater
Georgia Institute of Technology
Georgia State Capitol
Georgian Terrace Hotel (Fox Theater Historic District)
Grant Park Historic District
Herndon Home
Inman Park and Inman Park-Moreland Historic Districts
Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park
Oakland Cemetery
Martin Luther King Jr., National Historic Site
Piedmont Park
Rhodes Memorial Hall
Shrine of the Immaculate Conception
St. Mark Methodist Church
Stone Hall, Atlanta University
Swan House
Sweet Auburn Historic District
The Temple
Tullie Smith House
Underground Atlanta
William P. Nicholson House
Credits
Atlanta, Georgia was produced by the National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, in cooperation with the Southeast Regional Office, the Atlanta History Center, the Historic Preservation Division of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources and the National Conference of State Historic Preservation Officers (NCSHPO). It was created under the direction of Carol D. Shull, Keeper of the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service, Patrick Andrus, Heritage Tourism Manager, and Beth L. Savage, Publications Managing Editor. Atlanta, Georgia is based on information in the files of the National Register of Historic Places and National Historic Landmarks collections. These materials are kept at 1201 Eye St., NW, Washington, D.C., and are open to the public from 8:00am to 12:00pm and 1:00pm to 4:00pm, Monday through Friday (although the collection is currently closed, click here for more information).
The National Park Service's Southeast Regional Office (SERO) proposed this project. National Register web production team members included Jeff Joeckel, who designed the itinerary, Rustin Quaide, and Shannon Bell (all of NCSHPO). Yen M. Tang (National Council for Preservation Education intern) was instrumental in compiling material for this project, including maps, photographs and text. Property descriptions were written by Yen Tang, Shannon Bell, Rustin Quaide, Andrew Halter, and Mark Barnes (SERO). Jody Cook, Architectural Historian with the SERO, provided invaluable historic postcards, color photographs, and editorial assistance. Essays were written by Andy Ambrose, Karen Leathem and Charles Smith of the Atlanta History Center (Antebellum Atlanta); Tommy Jones, Architectural Historian, SERO (Industrial Atlanta and Growth and Preservation); and Yen Tang and Rustin Quaide (African American Experience). Special thanks to the following for their photographic contributions: Atlanta Urban Design Commission, Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau/Kevin C. Rose (www.AtlantaPhotos.com), Callanwolde Fine Arts Center, Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation, Druid Hills High School, Fox Theatre, The Herndon Foundation, Piedmont Park Conservancy, SodaTraderZ.com, and Winter Properties.
Is 1923 Howell Mill Dr in East Hamilton School District
Source: https://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/atlanta/text.htm
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