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Washington Park Historic District
National Register photograph by Yen Tang |
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.
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