American Lives

View from Jackson Street Bridge, Atlanta, GA.

In the early 1960s, Georgia Department of Transportation built the Downtown Connector Freedom Parkway interchange with the intention of running a freeway through the Old Fourth Ward, which would then run through several other neighborhoods such as Inman Park and Candler Park before meeting up with what is now the Stone Mountain Freeway.

A lengthy and energetic grassroots battle by citizens in the area was ultimately successful for them to halt the projected thoroughfare, but not before hundreds of homes and businesses were bulldozed.

The Jackson Street bridge is a remnant of that project, offering an extremely dramatic view of Atlanta's skyline just to the west. Peachtree Street, the spine on which this skyline sits, runs along a ridge, and the fact that no buildings stand to obstruct this view makes it an iconic vantage point.

B Mifflin Hood Brick Co (Brickworks Gallery), 686a Greenwood Ave NE.

On Greenwood Avenue, abutting the popular NE section of the Atlanta Beltline in Virginia Highland, this is a successful adaptive reuse of a building which was originally built in 1909 to serve as the headquarters and showroom of the B Mifflin Hood Brick Company, a company which touted it product as 'non-convict brick'.

It's notable that the company did not engage in the shameful practice of convict-leasing which was prevalent in Georgia at this time when it came to producing brick, as well as in other industries.

The building's location is typical of industrial use which would have given it easy access to the rail line which ultimately became the Beltline. Now it is highly prime real estate in the area known as Virginia-Highland.

It underwent massive renovation in 1921 which tripled the building's total floorspace. B Mifflin Hood operated in the building until 1947. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2018 and today serves as a condominium (apartment building).

Caravaca Market, 782 Peachtree St NE.

Built on land which was previously occupied for many years by the very prominent First Baptist Church of Atlanta before it moved to the suburbs, this building is fairly unremarkable. The specialty market seen here was only open a short time before it became a casualty of the Covid-19 pandemic.

CNN Center, Marietta St NW.

The corporate signage for CNN Headquarters is located outside the building, near the intersection of Centennial Olympic Park Drive and Marietta Street NW.

CNN Center, Marietta St NW.

The OMNI International Center was built by developer Tom Cousins next to the Omni Coliseum, which opened in 1972.

See more here: Postcards of Atlanta: The Omni.

The center opened later in the mid-seventies and was promoted as a 'total urban environment complex', 'a city within a city', and 'the first of its kind in the United States'.

It contained thirty-four million cubic square feet of space (962,772 square meters), including eight million cubic feet (226,534 square meters) of open space, a skylighted interior court which ran the full height and length of the building, and a 200-foot continuous escalator (or sixty-one meters, seen here), the largest in the world at the time.

It can carry people up eight levels to reach ten movie theatres, 'The World of Sid and Mary Krofft' amusement park (open for only six months before closing), an ice-skating rink, five hundred hotel rooms, and 1.8 million square feet (167,225 square meters) of rentable space for retail and restaurants or offices.

At a time when 'white flight' was taking place and people were loathe to be in traditional city centers anymore in favor of new suburban spaces, coupled with the sad time of the Atlanta Child Murders, the complex struggled.

In 1987, Tom Cousins sold a twenty-five percent interest in the complex to Ted Turner, who moved his Cable News Network (CNN) here and only then did the complex generate a profit.

As of now, most of the talent and production for the US channel is based in New York City, but the complex remains the world headquarters.

Healey Building, 57 Forsyth St.

The Healy Building is located in the historic Farlie-Poplar district of Downtown Atlanta.

Constructed in 1914 and designed by T Walter Downing with Morgan and Dillon, the building was known as 'The Queen of Atlanta' upon completion. It was also the last major skyscraper built during the first great building boom prior to the start of the First World War.

Healey Building, 57 Forsyth St.

The building remained in the Healey family until 1972. In 1977 it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

With retail and gallery spaces on the first floor along with originally office space above, it is a lovely, graceful building in the Gothic Revival style which, since 2001, has been known as the Healey Building Condominiums.

Krab Queenz Seafood, 521 Peachtree St NE.

On a stretch of Peachtree Street to the south of Midtown, but before reaching Downtown proper, lies a stretch of buildings which hearken back to Atlanta's 1800s street scale: single-storey structures with easy, direct pedestrian access, having served myriad uses through the years and remaining located between Linden Avenue and Pine Street.

Very close to a large and now-closed homeless shelter, this area has for many years been known as being 'in transition'.

From 1999 to 2017 the location to the right housed 'Gladys Knight's Chicken and Waffles', which opened with much fanfare but ultimately was dragged down in difficult dealings with the singer's son, who was a partner in the business.

Grady Emory Pediatrics, 341 Ponce De Leon Ave NE.

Completed in November 1966 as the Presbyterian Center, this building served as a headquarters for the denomination, a $2.5 million, 90,000 square-foot hub (8,361 square meters) for the Presbyterian Church in the US.

Today it is part of Grady Health System. This Ponce De Leon center is one of the largest, most comprehensive facilities in the United States to be dedicated to the treatment of advanced HIV/AIDS.

Founded in 1986, the Ponce Center and its onsite affiliates provide various medical and support services to approximately 5,000 eligible men, women, adolescents, and children who are living with HIV/AIDS.

The view of south-east Atlanta from the Martin Luther King Jr Memorial Marta station.

The new King Recreation and Aquatic Center, completed in 2017, can be seen in the center, above the green space.

This $23.5 million center is a few blocks from the original center which was built in the 1970s to honor King's love of swimming, but this closed in 2012 due to structural problems.

The tiered building in the skyline is the Georgia-Pacific HQ, located where the Loews Grand Theater originally stood, and where the 1939 world premiere of Gone With the Wind was held.

Dekalb Avenue runs east-west directly in the lower portion of the photo, a very historic road which links Decatur, Atlanta, and Marietta, and which is depicted in the focal area of Atlanta's 'Battle of Atlanta' Cyclorama painting at the Atlanta History Center.

See more here: Battle of Atlanta.