Growing up in repressive rural Georgia hours north of Atlanta, I dreamt of going to Pride in Piedmont Park – a chance to experience freedom, joy, hope, and love in the expression of the queer identity. Now at college and in my third year in the city, I am a few months out from attending my third Atlanta Pride. It has been everything I hoped: the colors, smiles, excitement, compliments, free mom hugs, drag queens swinging from poles on moving floats, seeing old friends, making new connections, and overwhelming emotion at the scale of LGBTQIA+ representation. Pride at Piedmont Park and the larger community provides the most electrifying, knowing, and supportive environment where one can see those both alike and different. Every year the smaller-than-you’d-think community gathers bumping into exes and impending self-realization yet are happy in the light air of the large gathering of a normally stigmatized and disjointed community. Experiencing this I found myself curious as to how such a setting, and Atlanta Pride, were born – what people, places, and ideals coalesced to create the resonant gay culture that midtown has become known for?
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Georgia State University students map Atlanta's past
Category: Atlanta Stories (page 1 of 2)
Some people may look at the space now and see the Mercedes Benz, and fondly remember the Georgia dome. However , many individuals don’t know what used to lie in its place and how the dome’s costly development and how it affected the lives of those around it.
Atlanta historically served as a connection for railroads and since then has economically boomed. In 1835, the state of Georgia was determined to build a railway to the Northwest, from the Tennessee line to the southwestern bank of the Chattahoochee River, and through Athens, Madison, Milledgeville, Forsyth, and Columbus.3 Eventually, Atlanta became the center for the South. With the consistent growth in population, Atlanta has rapidly developed and evolve from the Civil War to the 1996 Olympics, the existence of the Underground became a result of this.4 The shopping and entertainment district in the heart of downtown Atlanta, also known as “the city beneath the city”, holds rich history and culture. Today it stretches across 50 Upper Alabama St SW which was historically constructed along the zero-mile post sometime during the 1920s.
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As a first-generation Mexican-American, Plaza Fiesta is a place with fond memories. The plaza was one of the rare places where I felt that I fit in, away from the stares of others. I grew up in a majority-white community in Cherokee County, Woodstock. So, getting to experience places like Plaza Fiesta occasionally was very refreshing for me and my family. Here, we didn’t have to worry about our English proficiency. Instead, we didn’t need English at all. My father got to ask all his silly questions without me having to translate them, and my mother got to feel a little less homesick. Granted, this is only one of many small spaces along Buford Highway that give Mexican families a sense of familiarity. However, Plaza Fiesta is different because it is the only market designed for Hispanic communities to spend their day like they would in their countries.
Looking at this lot’s history, we can see the evolution of Buford Highway and its demographic change. We will also see that the lot has always been geared towards the community in the area. This lot, along with many other spaces in the corridor, shows the adaptability and openness to new business regardless of race.
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Western Facade of the Capital Blueprints1
If you were to think of the Georgia State Capitol, the image that would come to your mind would likely be the imposing building sitting just south of the Georgia State University MARTA station. Standing atop Capitol Square Block, the structure gated off from the outside. Several statues adorn the outside along with maintained lawns to give an almost park like appearance. The actual structure itself is four stories tall with four asystematical facades that adorn its outside. Its main entrance, the west main entrance, is the grandest of these facades. Carved into the stone above the west entrance in a relief carving are four figures and the seal of Georgia. On the right of the seal is a man and a woman. The man represents the armed forces with a helmet and sword and the woman represents peace with her horn of plenty. On the left side, there is another man and woman. The woman holds mercury and an anchor to symbolize trade while the man holds a hammer to symbolize industry. Yet, towering above the four figures is a fifth. Standing atop the capitol building at its highest point, standing on a dome of gold, is a robed women holding a sword and a torch representing the idea of liberty.
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Right on Auburn Avenue and Hillard street stands the Prince Hall Masonic Temple, a building that is a token of the historical Sweet Auburn passage. Before its pivotal role in history, the lot which now hosts the building, was vacant for a period of time, then a duplex was built on the vacant land, as indicated by historical maps.
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John Portman
John Portman was born on December 4, 1924, in South Carolina. Portman was raised in Atlanta and served during World War II. He attended Georgia Tech where he would study and earn his degree in architecture in 1950. He opened his architectural firm in 1953 and named it John Portman and Associates. This company would transform his company into a real-estate company, and eventually become involved in a home decor wholesaler. Not only would his work be in the city of Atlanta, but also in Chicago, Illinois; California, San Francisco; and Detroit, Michigan. Portman would become an important architect and restate developer figure in Atlanta’s development of Peachtree Center and reviving the decaying city. 1
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If you travel down Edgewood Avenue, you’ll pass through historic parts of Atlanta that have a deep and rich history with the city of Atlanta, including through the retail district and into the historic Inman Park neighborhood. This rich history extends throughout Edgewood Avenue, however there is one building which tends to stand out near the east end of Edgewood Avenue, near the Inman Park/Reynoldstown MARTA station — the Trolley Barn.
The Winecoff Hotel, currently known as the Ellis Hotel, was burned down on the early morning of December 7, 1946. The fire started around 3:15 A.M. and claimed the lives of 119 occupants. 1The story of large building fires during the 1940s was not a unique one, but the Winecoff Hotel Fire created a wake up call for fire safety throughout the country. The absence of fire alarms and sprinkler systems in the Winecoff Hotel resulted in an update to building codes around the country. Eerie stories of abnormal activities at the current Ellis Hotel has been a catalyst for a local Atlanta bone-chilling chronicle.
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Centennial Olympic Park is the centerpiece of Downtown Atlanta, where tourists and locals alike can unwind in the grass, take a stroll through the various Olympic monuments and look at breathtaking views of Downtown’s skyline. As a kid growing up in Atlanta, I always loved the design and location of this park, nestled in the center of a bustling city. I remember always having a blast running through those Olympic rings. But before this urban centerpiece was even a park, there is an interesting history of what was there before.
Hurt Park is a two-acre park located at 25 Courtland St SE. Opening in 1940, the park transformed “an area of rambling, obsolete and run-down structures into a rolling stretch of green lawns.”1 Named after Joel Hurt, one of the most influential people in the city’s early history, the park is now co-owned by the City of Atlanta and Georgia State University after a recent renewal. But what was the history behind the land and the man it was named after?
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Bowen Homes was an Atlanta Public Housing development built in 1964. It was one of the last developments that was demolished in 2009. What was once one of Atlanta’s largest housing developments is now 74 acres of vacant land with only the abandoned A.D. Williams Elementary school left standing. Plans for redevelopment have been announced but work has yet to begin.
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In 2020 contractor Brassfield & Gorrie broke ground to build Georgia State University’s Convocation Center.2 This premier facility has already been incorporated into GSU’s operations, hosting athletics and graduation ceremonies, among many other events. Occupying an entire block across from GSU’s Blue Lot, its presence looms large in Summerhill. The center has yet to see a class from freshman convocation through commencement, and this newness raises a question: how did GSU acquire the land, and what was there before?
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Downtown Atlanta is certainly devoid of many of its original prominent buildings. Just a few, such as the comically endearing wedge-shaped Flatiron Building and the lavishly decorated Candler Building sit amongst modernist monuments to an era of Urban Renewal and post-war corporatism. One of these surviving buildings was also the city’s first entry into the Art Deco wave of the late ’20s and ’30s, the William Oliver building.
Continue readingIn a Time Long Ago…
For many residents of Atlanta’s Eastside, US-23 (or Moreland Avenue) is the backbone of their community. It connects the vibrant cultural hubs of Little Five Points and East Atlanta Village to a myriad of classic Eastside neighborhoods such as Candler Park and East Atlanta. While this route may be a high-traffic residential road today, in 1864 it was little more than undeveloped farmland—unremarkable in every way except its role as the dividing line between Fulton and Dekalb counties. However, as Sherman’s Federal armies made their way towards Atlanta, this undistinguished strip of land would become the site of some of the fiercest fighting experienced by participants of the Atlanta Campaign in the American Civil War. While this clash of arms took place in an area that was, at the time, southeast of the city limits, the action which centered around Federal fortifications at Bald Hill came to be known both to its contemporaries and historians as the Battle of Atlanta. The Battle of Atlanta, though a fierce and bloody contest, would prove inconsequential to the fate of the city and today is a forgotten relic of Atlanta’s past, its historical markers serving as the only testaments to this tremendous folly of war.
Spelman College is currently regarded as one of the most highly esteemed and respected colleges dedicated to the higher education of African American women. The school has a long history that has led to this achievement.
Spelman’s beginnings may surprise some due to its distinguishment as an HBCU. Originally named Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary, Spelman College was founded in 1881 by Sophia Packard and Harriet Giles. Both were white women who hailed from Massachusetts and came to Atlanta with the hope of establishing a school for young black women. Backed by financial support from the Woman’s American Baptist Home Mission Society (WABHMS) and others, Giles and Packard opened a school in the basement of Friendship Baptist Church, an African American church in southwest Atlanta.
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Prohibition in Georgia has a long history; starting as early as the 1830s, temperance communities had become prevalent. Because of Atlanta’s explosive growth and development post-Civil War, saloons and other entertainment establishments were widespread throughout the city, particularly on Decatur Street. With an ever-increasing number of saloons, public drunkenness became commonplace, and the societal costs of drinking became more apparent. Saloons not only provided space for interracial mingling and intoxication, but they were also a symbol of the growing Black middle-class. These factors only incited tension among the races, further pushed to the brink by inflammatory publications that ultimately lead to a massacre of the Black community. The Riot of 1906 was the catalyst for Georgia’s statewide prohibition act, which sought to further disenfranchise minorities rather than address the societal issues at hand.
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