A collection of photographs that highlight historic Druid Hills in Atlanta, Georgia and the history behind the influential suburb. Three remarkable people were responsible for the beginnings of Atlanta's historic Druid Hills. The first was entrepreneur Joel Hurt, who having already experienced success with his rail-served development of Inman Park set his sights on a second community. With remarkable vision, Hurt hired renowned landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted Sr. to plan his new subdivision. Druid Hills would be Olmsted's last design and also his only one in the Deep South. Hurt eventually sold the land for his subdivision to a group of wealthy and influential businessmen, headed by Coca-Cola owner Asa Griggs Candler. The men retained Olmsted as landscape architect and planner. The story of historic Druid Hills weaves the genius of America's father of landscape architecture with the acumen of the owners of the Druid Hills Corporation. With its central linear park, curvilinear streets, and an abundance of trees, Druid Hills succeeded in becoming an ideal suburb that eventually became home to the civic and business lions of Atlanta.
The Druid Hills neighborhood is characterized by rolling hills, magnificent trees and shrubs and gorgeous, expansive houses. Its Ponce de Leon corridor bears the imprint of the founder of American landscape architecture, Frederick Law Olmsted. The brainchild of Joel Hurt, the neighborhood was brought to fruition by some of Atlanta's most prominent businessmen, including Asa Candler, founder of Coca-Cola. It was these movers and shakers of the city who lived in the neighborhood during the early decades of the twentieth century. In 1914, Druid Hills was permanently altered with the announcement that it would be the site of Emory University's new main campus. Now the residents coexist with what has become an international university community. Historian Robert Hartle Jr. has written an honest, impeccably researched tribute to Druid Hills, truly one of the jewels in Atlanta's crown.
Druid Hill Park lies at the hears of Baltimore and made history as one of the first public parks in America. This beautifully illustrated history tells the story of Druid Hill from the seventeenth century until today, and celebrates this natural refuge for fun and relaxation in urban Baltimore.
From its beginnings as a tiny rail-line settlement in 1837 to its emergence as the designated host city for the 1996 Summer Olympic Games, Atlanta has been on the move. Its dramatic and ever-changing skyline attests to the fact that it is one of America’s most dynamic cities—the epitome of what has come to be known as the “New South.” Yet for all its striking modern architecture, Atlanta is much more than a collection of soaring skyscrapers, as David King Gleason makes clear in this beautiful new book, featuring some 150 color photographs of Georgia’s capital city in all its splendid variety. Here are Atlanta’s impressive business towers, familiar to travelers from all over the world, but here too are its bucolic neighborhoods and parks, its decades-old landmarks and educational institutions, its sporting and entertainment facilities, its museums and theaters. With his camera Gleason roams from downtown, where the nineteenth-century ornateness of the gold-domed State Capitol contrasts with the ultramodern designs of recently built skyscrapers, to the outskirts of this sprawling city, were the winding Chattachoochee River and the mammoth carved granite dome of Stone Mountain attract visitors year-round. He discloses the diversity of Atlanta’s many neighborhoods in shots of the rejuvenated Midtown section, whose well-established residential enclaves now sit almost cheek by jowl with new office buildings, and farther to the north, in photographs of the thriving Buckhead area, the site of some of the city’s most impressive mansions of the past as well as of more recent vintage. Reflecting Atlanta’s importance as an educational center, Gleason includes photographs of such institutions as Emory University, Georgia Tech, and the various colleges (Morehouse, Spelman, and others) that make up the Atlanta University Center. Photographs of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthplace and of the Carter Presidential Center are just two reminders that Georgians have often been at the forefront of political progress in America. The city’s interest in culture and recreation is represented in images of the High Museums of Art, the Atlanta Botanical Garden, Underground Atlanta, and the many sporting venues where both college and professional teams compete. An introduction by the Atlanta poet and physician John Stone and captions by newspaper journalist Don O’Briant complement Gleason’s evocative photographs. Anyone—longtime resident, newcomer, and visitor alike—will find this a book to keep and treasure.
Seeking Eden promotes an awareness of, and appreciation for, Georgia’s rich garden heritage. Updated and expanded here are the stories of nearly thirty designed landscapes first identified in the early twentieth-century publication Garden History of Georgia, 1733–1933. Seeking Eden records each garden’s evolution and history as well as each garden’s current early twenty-first-century appearance, as beautifully documented in photographs. Dating from the mid-eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries, these publicly and privately owned gardens include nineteenth-century parterres, Colonial Revival gardens, Country Place–era landscapes, rock gardens, historic town squares, college campuses, and an urban conservation garden. Seeking Eden explores the significant impact of the women who envisioned and nurtured many of these special places; the role of professional designers, including J. Neel Reid, Philip Trammel Shutze, William C. Pauley, Robert B. Cridland, the Olmsted Brothers, Hubert Bond Owens, and Clermont Lee; and the influence of the garden club movement in Georgia in the early twentieth century. FEATURED GARDENS: Andrew Low House and Garden | Savannah Ashland Farm | Flintstone Barnsley Gardens | Adairsville Barrington Hall and Bulloch Hall | Roswell Battersby-Hartridge Garden | Savannah Beech Haven | Athens Berry College: Oak Hill and House o’ Dreams | Mount Berry Bradley Olmsted Garden | Columbus Cator Woolford Gardens | Atlanta Coffin-Reynolds Mansion | Sapelo Island Dunaway Gardens | Newnan vicinity Governor’s Mansion | Atlanta Hills and Dales Estate | LaGrange Lullwater Conservation Garden | Atlanta Millpond Plantation | Thomasville vicinity Oakton | Marietta Rock City Gardens | Lookout Mountain Salubrity Hall | Augusta Savannah Squares | Savannah Stephenson-Adams-Land Garden | Atlanta Swan House | Atlanta University of Georgia: North Campus, the President’s House and Garden, and the Founders Memorial Garden | Athens Valley View | Cartersville vicinity Wormsloe and Wormsloe State Historic Site | Savannah vicinity Zahner-Slick Garden | Atlanta
