"History Fourth Ward" Area of Atlanta?

[bryantm3]

Originally Posted by equinox63

You may be referring to Pink City


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCqGb8LvsAA

no this was on north avenue. it was run by an organization i don't remember the name of. i think this was it:


https://goo.gl/maps/cbUGGgLArM4bSnDL7

https://goo.gl/maps/dfSxvZv87FP4nQsa9


those 2007 streetview maps are really interesting.

[arjay57]

Originally Posted by Huntsville_secede

The freeway revolt history was interesting. Didn't realize they tried to build a connection from GA 400 to I-85 called I-485 and then revisited this in 2010 as a tunnel.

The area has been known as the Old Fourth Ward for a long time. And the roadway battles have not always been pretty.

See Bill Shipp's 1984 editorial in the Constitution blasting what he describes as the "white elitists" in the anti-parkway initiative for excluding black residents of the Old Fourth Ward.

"In their zeal to block construction of the Presidential Parkway and the Jimmy Carter library along with it, white elitists in east Atlanta and DeKalb County may have succeeded in dividing their neighborhoods far more deeply and more permanently than could any roadway.

They have systematically excluded resident-proponents of the project from discussions of how the area would be impacted. In carefully orchestrating the opposition to the plan, the white citizens group -- CAUTION -- has turned it back on black residents of the Old Fourth Ward, the neighborhood already damaged severely by the abandoned Interstate 485 project and the neighborhood that could be restored by the parkway and library project.

...The affluent whites who turned fighting the parkway into an upper-class sport similar to, say, croquet or backgammon, have shown their true feelings to the detriment of the whole city. No black players are wanted -- if they won’t go along with the program to stop the parkway and the library, no matter who wins or loses."

Atlanta Constitution, 5/16/84, p. 14

[Saintmarks]

Originally Posted by Clayton white guy

I am a Native Atlantan and I have ALWAYS heard the Georgia Baptist Hospital, where I was born (present Atlanta Medical) area referred to as the Fourth Ward, but not as far north/ east as "Poncy-Highland" which I always thought of as the western frontier of Inman Park.

I also had heard that Boulevard had its grand name because it was once lined with the grand mansions of the Victorian era. (My grandmother, who was born in 1913 and died only a couple of years ago at 104) said that Washington Street going south of the Georgia State Capital down toward to maligned and now re-surging (thanks to Georgia State) Summerhill Community was also lined with glorious "painted ladies with "gingerbread" festoon porches and balconies of the late Victorian era. This was the same area where the founders of the late, great Rich's Department Store of Atlanta (Morris Rich and his brothers, M. Rich & Bros.) lived a few blocks over on Pryor Street in lovely Victorian homes. My grandmother told e the old interurban trolley from Fairburn would go straight past these beauties on their way to shop Downtown at Rich's store on Whitehall Street (now lower Paechtree) and High's, which was nearby. This was before Rich's moved to their famous store with the "Rich's-Atlanta" clock at Broad and Alabama that closed in the early 1990's.

The 1917 fire FOREVER changed the northern stretch of Boulevard. I am not certain what happened to change the fortunes of Washington Street, Pryor Street and the rest of the greater Summerhill area. I DO know that it was home to many successful Jewish business leaders (like the Riches) and even boasted the city's first synagogue ( which I THINK was the original location for The Temple which is now on Peachtree Street in northern Midtown) and the original Fulton High (then for Fulton County residents that lived close to Atlanta, but not IN it) not like the replacement Fulton High that used to be the neighborhood school for Lakewood Heights area that was ALWAYS an Atlanta Public School.

Finally, Most of the Old Fourth Ward seems to be, geographically speaking, east of Downtown, not Midtown. Just the few blocks north of Lindon Avenue (the division line between Downtown/ Midtown located at the doorstep of the historic Crawford Long Hospital building.) Yes, that does put the renamed "Emory Midtown" BARELY Downtown!

My grandmother was born in Cherokee County in 1889 but the family moved to East Atlanta when she was twelve. The house is still standing a few blocks east of Moreland, right behind the Edgewood Retail District on Flora Ave. Went to school with one of the Candlers of Coca Cola fame. She took the street car to downtown where she worked as a bookkeeper and stenographer in the Hurt office building. She watched the great fire from there. She was a single working woman into her thirties, a rarity at that time. Swore she would never marry a preacher or widower. My widowed baptist preacher grandfather from Hogansville came to pastor Edgewood Baptist Church. The rest is history.

She lived til 1990, aged 101. I have a pic of her holding my firstborn when he was but a few days old. She passed on 6 weeks later. How I wish I could get more stories out of her but treasure the ones I have.

[arjay57]

The Wikipedia article has great maps of how the 4th Ward was originally laid out and how it was changed in 1883.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Ward_(Atlanta)

[J2rescue]

Originally Posted by Huntsville_secede

The freeway revolt history was interesting. Didn't realize they tried to build a connection from GA 400 to I-85 called I-485 and then revisited this in 2010 as a tunnel.

AFTER they had already demolished 500 homes! This is unimaginable in this day and age.

[Iconographer]

Originally Posted by J2rescue

AFTER they had already demolished 500 homes! This is unimaginable in this day and age.

There were churches that had to close their doors as the destruction of homes resulted in a diaspora of their congregants.