The Atlanta Historical journal Biiekhed UE(fATCKJ„=.._ E<vsf\Poio.<f J Summer/Fall Volume XXVI Number 2-3 The Atlanta Historical Journal Urban Structure, Atlanta Timothy J. Crimmins Dana F. White Guest Editor Guest Editor Ann E. Woodall Editor Map Design by Brian Randall Richard Rothman & Associates Volume XXVI, Numbers 2-3 Summer-Fall 1982 Copyright 1982 by Atlanta Historical Society, Inc. Atlanta, Georgia Cover: The 1895 topographical map of Atlanta and vicinity serves as the background on which railroads and suburbs are highlighted. From the original three railroads of the 1840s evolved the configuration of 1895; since that time, suburban expansion and highway development have dramatically altered the landscape. The layering of Atlanta's metropolitan environment is the focus of this issue. (Courtesy of the Sur­ veyor General, Department of Archives and History, State of Georgia) Funds for this issue were provided by the Research Division of the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Alumni Association of Georgia State University, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and the University Research Committee of Emory University. Additional copies of this number may be obtained from the Society at a cost of $7.00 per copy. Please send checks made payable to the Atlanta Historical Society to 3101 Andrews Dr. N.W., Atlanta, Georgia, 30305. TABLE OF CONTENTS Urban Structure, Atlanta: An Introduction By Dana F. White and Timothy J. Crimmins 6 Part I The Atlanta Palimpsest: Stripping Away the Layers of the Past By Timothy J. Crimmins 13 West End: Metamorphosis from Suburban Town to Intown Neighborhood By Timothy J. Crimmins 33 The Other Side of the Tracks: Cabbagetown—A Working- Class Neighborhood in Transition During the Early Twentieth Century By Stephen W. Grable 51 Breaking Out: Streetcars and Suburban Development, 1872-1900 By Don L. Klima 67 Bungalow Suburbs East and West By Timothy J. Crimmins 83 Part II Landscaped Atlanta: The Romantic Tradition in Cemetery, Park, and Suburban Development By Dana F. White 95 From Suburb to Defended Neighborhood: The Evolution of Inman Park and Ansley Park, 1890-1980 By Rick Beard 113 The Ties That Bind: Work and Family Patterns in the Oakdale Road Section of Druid Hills, 1910-1940 By Andrew M. Ambrose 141 Atlanta University's "Northeast Lot": Community Building for Black Atlanta's "Talented Tenth" By Ann D. Byrne and Dana F. White 155 Part III In the Mind's Eye: The Downtown as Visual Metaphor for the Metropolis By Karen Luehrs and Timothy J. Crimmins 177 The Black Sides of Atlanta: A Geography of Expansion and Containment, 1970-1870 By Dana F. White 199 Contributors 226 This special issue is dedicated to Frederick Gutheim, our first coun­ selor in the ways cities work, and to the late Clarence A. Bacote, our local mentor who introduced us to Atlanta. Timothy J. Crimmins Dana F. White Urban Structure Atlanta: An Introduction By Dana F. White and Timothy J. Crimmins v«roncerning Juan Peron's Argentina, V.S. Naipaul wrote, "... there is no art of historical analysis; there is no art of biography. There is legend and antiquarian romance, but no real history. There are only annals, lists of rulers, chronicles of events."1 The same might be said, we have often thought, of much that passes for urban history. On February 14, 1975, we presented a paper on the "Anatomy of Atlanta: Contours of Regional City Growth" for "The Urban South: Virginia Conference on Urban Studies" at Old Dominion University in Norfolk. A year later, an expanded version of this paper was published in the "Urban Themes in the American South" special issue of the Journal of Urban History.2 Its thrust was a radical departure from the Journal — Summer/Fall 7 kind of non-analytical mode decried by Naipaul toward, again in his words, "real history." Here, we present the initial results of that effort.3 In a document entitled "The Past in the Future," the noted urban- ist Frederick Gutheim set forth, as we described it a half-dozen years ago, a "prospectus for a usable" urban history that was "at once, com­ prehensive and simple: first, select for study the service and delivery systems that tie together the separate parts of the city; second, identify and examine a sampling of those smaller communities that together have created the larger metropolis. "The systems half of our study, we continued, would "trace the city's historical development—through maps and photographs—of such city-wide 'systems' as street patterns, the water supply, sanitary facili­ ties, utilities, transportation lines, postal services, the locating of police stations and fire houses, the building of public libraries and schools (to­ gether with the allocation of administrative personnel), the distribution of churches, patterns of various business services, networks of commu­ nications, and the like. The first part of such a study will be devoted, then, to the city's skeleton. "The second part of the construct, the area analyses, will 'flesh out' the bare bones of part one. Its purpose will be to identify and describe selected districts in Atlanta for intensive study—key locales and neigh­ borhoods—to represent significant stages in the development of Metro Atlanta. These individual histories of old and new neighborhoods, busi­ ness districts, and industrial areas will be detailed but varied in their content; together, they will bring life to the Gate City of the South dur­ ing its first 125 years of existence. "Together, the systems studies and area analyses will provide," we concluded, "an organized picture of the physical development of a ma­ jor American city, a regional metropolis which has long outgrown its original frontier boundaries ..." through an analysis of "the central themes of 'Regional City's' past: its evolution as a nineteenth-century railroad center, its fragile balance in the equilibrium of race relations, its nineteenth- and early twentieth-century suburban expansion, and its reliance on transportation as the determinant of physical expansion."4 In the light of what has happened, as well as what has not hap­ pened since the above was written, we recall Daniel H. Burnham's oft- quoted challenge to city planners: "Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work . ." We recall, too, the previously-mentioned Frederick Gutheim's amendment to Burnham's injunction: "Make no little plans—and beware of grand designs." To­ day, as we reflect upon our own "grand designs" of 1975, especially the wide range of systems studies that we projected, the good sense of Gutheim's warning wins out. Still, Burnham's advice to "aim high in hope and work" also rings true for, as we trust these pages will demon- 8 ATLANTA HISTORICAL SOCIETY strate, the systems studies and area analyses do indeed begin to provide the "organized picture of the physical development of a major Ameri­ can city, a regional metropolis" that we described in 1975. Although the two-part approach that we projected in 1975 has held up well, it has not remained unchanged; in fact, it has undergone two major adjustments. To begin with, the distinctions between systems studies and area analyses have not been as marked in practice as they seemed, then, in theory; thus, a number of the articles that follow com­ bine the two. Then, too, area has taken precedence over system. In large part, this was due to the increasing attention given, during the past decade, to the local rather than the metropolitan—the renascence of, to update the classic terms, Gemeinschaft over Gesellschaft stud­ ies.6 Because we profess, and believe in, a usable history, we have at­ tempted to draw upon—as it has been called variously—the neighbor­ hood resettlement, community preservation, or gentrification movement as a vital aspect of our analysis. Hence area over system. Our interest in a usable history has also led us to take literally the advice of G. H. Martin, an historian who has studied the changing envi­ ronment of British towns, to treat the city as a document because "it displays its history in its public face, as well as in its archives."6 It is our hope that the articles in this issue of the Journal will help Atlantans to "read" their city in new ways; to use such physical ele­ ments as older Victorian homes, railroad tracks, street configurations, and topography to see patterns in the historical development of the metropolitan area which they have not noticed before. We have taken special care to assist in this process by using maps and photographs with each of the articles so that readers may see Atlanta as it was and in their travels about the city make the necessary connections with the way it is now. In these pages, Atlanta's history has been divided into three cate­ gories: the first two differentiate between the planned and unplanned dimensions of the city's past while the third contrasts the public image of an expanding New South metropolis with the face it hid behind the color line. In Part One, we begin with, as the British urban historian H.J. Dyos described it, "the history of the 'unplanning of towns.' "7 In Part Two, we examine planned aspects of Atlanta's development. When, where, if there were differences between the planned and the unplanned are constant questions throughout. In both parts, of course, we include systems studies and area analyses; in addition, we introduce the concept of urban generation, a theory which suggests that a city's "actual age may sometimes be less important than its generation or stage of development": "that a city's evolution need not be inescapably linear; instead, it may evidence irregular, even abrupt, periods of growth and decline, boom and bust."8 Using the concept of generation in Part Three, we trace the irregular changes in the skyline and the Journal — Summer/Fall 9 racial configurations of Atlanta to sketch two faces of the city—a public one, the downtown, that came to represent the growing metropolis; the other, a segregated city, that lay invisible on the other side of the color line.