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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 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

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. More information on this neighbhorhood can be found at http://www.buckhead.org/gardenhills.

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

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 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 . Guided walking tours are also offered by The Atlanta Preservation Center (www.preserveatlanta.com). Consult their website for information.

Habersham Memorial Hall

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 Pi