Published in 1962, this history of Atlanta's famous thoroughfare traces its evolution from an Indian trail to a village street in the 1840s, to its rebuilding after 1864, and on to the rise of its modern skyline. William Bailey Williford portrays the many personalities that shaped Peachtree Street and describes the social, civic, and business life that flourished along the busy corridor.
In 1990 David Kaufman decided to explore Peachtree Creek from its headwaters to its confluence with the Chattahoochee River. For thirteen years he paddled the creek, photographed it, and researched its history as the Atlanta area's major watershed. The result is Peachtree Creek, a compelling mix of urban travelogue, local history, and call for conservation. Historical images and Kaufman's evocative color photographs help capture the creek's many faces, past and present. Most Atlantans only glimpse Peachtree Creek briefly, as they pass over it on their daily commute, if at all. Looking down on the creek from Piedmont or Peachtree Roads, few contemplate how it courses through the city, where it originates and flows to. Fewer still-many fewer-would ever consider paddling down it, with its pollution and flash floods. Through his expeditions down Peachtree Creek and its five tributaries--North Fork, South Fork, Clear Creek, Nancy Creek, and Tanyard Creek--Kaufman takes readers through such places as Piedmont and Chastain Parks, which, aside from the polluted water, are beautiful, even bucolic. Other stretches of creek, like those draining Midtown and Atlantic Station, are channeled into massive culverts and choked with discarded waste from the city. One day, floating past the Bobby Jones Golf Course, he surprises a golfer searching for his stray ball along the creek bank; another he spends talking to a homeless man living under a bridge near Buckhead. Kaufman reveals fascinating aspects of Atlanta by examining how Peachtree Creek shaped and was shaped by the history of the area. Street names like Moore's Mill Road and Howell Mill Road take on new meaning. He explains the dynamics of water run off that cause the creek to go from a trickle to a torrent in a matter of hours. Kaufman asks how a waterway that was once people's source of water, power, and livelihood became, at its worst, an open sewer and flooding hazard. Portraying some of our worst mishandling of the environment, Kaufman suggests ways to a more sustainable stewardship of Peachtree Creek.
This lively guidebook surveys four hundred buildings within the Atlanta metropolitan area--from the sleek marble and glass of the Coca-Cola Tower to the lancet arches and onion domes of the Fox Theater, from the quiet stateliness of Roswell's antebellum mansions to the art-deco charms of the Varsity grill. Published in conjunction with the Atlanta chapter of the American Institute of Architects, it combines historical, descriptive, and critical commentary with more than 250 photographs and area maps. As the book makes clear, Atlanta has two faces: the "Traditional City," striving to strike a balance between the preservation of a valuable past and the challenge of modernization, and also the "Invisible Metropolis," a decentralized city shaped more by the isolated ventures of private business than by public intervention. Accordingly, the city's architecture reflects a dichotomy between the northern-emulating boosterism that made Atlanta a boom town and the genteel aesthetic more characteristic of its southern locale. The city's recent development continues the trend; as Atlanta's workplaces become increasingly "high-tech," its residential areas remain resolutely traditional. In the book's opening section, Dana White places the different stages of Atlanta's growth--from its beginnings as a railroad town to its recent selection as the site of the 1996 Summer Olympics--in their social, cultural, and economic context; Isabelle Gournay then analyzes the major urban and architectural trends from a critical perspective. The main body of the book consists of more than twenty architectural tours organized according to neighborhoods or districts such as Midtown, Druid Hills, West End, Ansley Park, and Buckhead. The buildings described and pictured capture the full range of architectural styles found in the city. Here are the prominent new buildings that have transformed Atlanta's skyline and neighborhoods: Philip John and John Burgee's revivalist IBM Tower, John Portman's taut Westin Peachtree Plaza, and Richard Meier's gleaming, white-paneled High Museum of Art, among others. Here too are landmarks from another era, such as the elegant residences designed in the early twentieth century by Neel Reid and Philip Shutze, two of the first Atlanta-based architects to achieve national prominence. Included as well are the eclectic skyscrapers near Five Points, the postmodern office clusters along Interstate 285, and the Victorian homes of Inman Park. Easy-to-follow area maps complement the descriptive entries and photographs; a bibliography, glossary, and indexes to buildings and architects round out the book. Whether first-time visitors or lifelong residents, readers will find in these pages a wealth of fascinating information about Atlanta's built environment.
In 1948, responding to orders from on high, the Atlanta Police Department is forced to hire its first black officers, including war veterans Lucius Boggs and Tommy Smith. The newly minted policemen are met with deep hostility by their white peers; they arent allowed to arrest white suspects, drive squad cars, or set foot in the police headquarters. But they carry guns, and they must bring law enforcement to a deeply mistrustful community. When black a woman who was last seen in a car driven by a white man turns up dead, Boggs and Smith take up the investigation on their own, as no one else seems to care. Their findings set them up against a brutal cop, Dunlow, who has long run the neighborhood as his own, and his partner, Rakestraw, a young progressive who may or may not be willing to make allies across color lines. Among shady moonshiners, duplicitous madams, crooked lawmen, and the constant restrictions of Jim Crow, Boggs and Smith will risk their new jobs, and their lives, while navigating a dangerous world--a world on the cusp of great change. --
The Bonfire of the Vanities defined an era--and established Tom Wolfe as our prime fictional chronicler of America at its most outrageous and alive. With A Man in Full, the time the setting is Atlanta, Georgia--a racially mixed late-century boomtown full of fresh wealth, avid speculators, and worldly-wise politicians. Big men. Big money. Big games. Big libidos. Big trouble. The protagonist is Charles Croker, once a college football star, now a late-middle-aged Atlanta real-estate entrepreneur turned conglomerate king, whose expansionist ambitions and outsize ego have at last hit up against reality. Charlie has a 28,000-acre quail-shooting plantation, a young and demanding second wife--and a half-empty office tower with a staggering load of debt. When star running back Fareek Fanon--the pride of one of Atlanta's grimmest slums--is accused of raping an Atlanta blueblood's daughter, the city's delicate racial balance is shattered overnight. Networks of illegal Asian immigrants crisscrossing the continent, daily life behind bars, shady real-estate syndicates, cast-off first wives of the corporate elite, the racially charged politics of college sports--Wolfe shows us the disparate worlds of contemporary America with all the verve, wit, and insight that have made him our most phenomenal, most admired contemporary novelist. A Man in Full is a 1998 National Book Award Finalist for Fiction.
You may think you know the South for its food, its people, its past, and its stories, but if there’s one thing that’s certain, it’s that the region tells far more than one tale. It is ever-evolving, open to interpretation, steeped in history and tradition, yet defined differently based on who you ask. This Is My South inspires the reader to explore the Southern States––Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia––like never before. No other guide pulls together these states into one book in quite this way with a fresh perspective on can’t-miss landmarks, off the beaten path gems, tours for every interest, unique places to sleep, and classic restaurants. So come see for yourself and create your own experiences along the way!
Named for the famous Spanish explorer who was said to have discovered the Fountain of Youth, Atlanta's Ponce de Leon Avenue began as a simple country road that conveyed visitors to the famous healing springs. Now, few motorists realize that the avenue, one of Atlanta's major commuter thoroughfares, was a prestigious residential street in Victorian Atlanta, home to mayors and millionaires. An economic turn in the twentieth century transformed the avenue into a crime-ridden commercial corridor, but in recent years, Atlantans have rediscovered the street's venerable architecture and storied history. Join local historian Sharon Foster Jones on a vivid tour of the avenue - from picnics by the springs in hoopskirts and Atlanta Crackers baseball to the Fox Theatre and the days when Vivien Leigh, Clark Gable and Al Capone lodged in the esteemed hotels lining this magnificent avenue.
