Tours of Atlanta Neighborhoods in a Van
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Georgia State sociology professor Charles Jaret conducts quarterly tours of Atlanta neighborhoods in a van. His daylong tour keeps students and interested explorers enthralled. (Staff Photos-Bill Mahan) A Moving Portrait Of Atlanta By Steve Dougherty slum and eventual renewal, or, in some cases, wholesale the shortest route — hence, Edgewood Avenue's lack of Constitution SlaH Writer clearance. curves. Jaret throws in some catch phrases, mentioning in the Throughout the tour, Jaret emphasizes the role rail- HARLIE Jaret is giving sociology a good name. The course of his introduction the "gentrification" of older, poor roads played in the building of Atlanta and the division of 32-year-old Georgia State University professor is one neighborhoods by the rich and the "incumbent upgrading" the city into a mosaic of separate and distinct neighbor- Cdoctor of the social "science" who bans all "-isms" of slum neighborhoods by their own citizens. And he may hoods. and "-ologies" from his lectures. refer to unemployed people in poverty areas as belonging to Crossing the new MARTA rail line to the area on the Jaret's "Moving Portrait" of Atlanta's neighborhoods is "surplus labor populations." southside of the old railroad's right-of-way known as Grant conducted from a white Dodge Maxiwagon that holds a But on the whole, little of what he says demands trans- Park, Jaret saves Atlanta newcomers embarrassment by dozen people. Jaret can take you slowly through some 19 lation. See TOUR, Page 7-B neighborhoods you've seen and maybe even lived in, but And once the van gets rolling through Atlanta's maze never knew quite so well before. of city streets and alleyways, his monologue bristles with A Long Island, N.Y., native who seems to know more informational gems sufficient to arm a trivia freak's con- about his adopted city than many lifelong Atlantans, Jaret versational arsenal for years to come. » eschews the jargon of his profession for pithy statements of historic fact — keeping the students and interested explor- To most of us, Edgewood Avenue is just another street ers who sign up, at $20 a head for his quarterly tours, en- To Jaret, it's a remarkable thoroughfare constructed along thralled. the line of an old trolley track that carried Atlanta's first A typical daylong tour begins in a GSU seminar room commuters to its first suburb — Inman Park. Edgewood where "the life cycle" of a typical neighborhood is discussed Avenue is one of the few streets in the city that runs in a — from its beginnings as a residential development, straight line from start to finish, Jaret says. The trolley through' its glory years as an "in" area for the city's trendy was built by Joel Hurt, Inman Park's developer, to carry elite, to its years of decline and slow deterioration into a suburbanites from home to work as quickly as possible over Rundown Housing In Cabbagttown, Where Life Once Revolved Around Fulton CottonliM Mill Restored House In Inman Park Today Tour opers who designed wide park-like grounds for the lands adja- Continued From Page 1-B cent to the trolley line that served the wealthy neighborhood explaining that the park wasn't named for Gen. UA Grant, but Ponce de Leon Avenue was constructed along the old for one Col. Lemuel P. Grant, a wealthy estate owner who trolley bed and took its name. Jaret says, from the **finish ex- donated some 90 acres to Atlanta for the city's first public plorer who searched in vain for a fountain of yout According park. to Jaret, he should have looked in Atlanta. "There was a hot Driving north toward Cabbagetown, Jaret explains how springs, thought to have restorative, healing powers just across Boulevard, long a road thrctagh a relatively poor area of the Ponce from where the Sears building now stands. The spring city, suddenly changes its name to Monroe Street on the north .was eventually capped and the ball park where the Atlanta side of Ponce de Leon Ave. Crackers played was built over the 'fountain of youth.' " When wealthy residents began to move into homes sur- From Ponce de Leon, Jaret drives, still talking, toward rounding Piedmont Park, they didn't want to be identified with Virginia-Highlands, past the streets of saints — St Charles, St Boulevard's lower-income neighborhoods. So they simply Louis and St. Augustine — that comprise the Atkins Park sub- changed the name of the street that marks the eastern border division. He points out the Atkins Park Deli that was the fiRt of Piedmont Park from Boulevard to Monroe bar in Atlanta to open after Prohibition. At the corner of Vir- Cabbagetown's now abandoned Fulton Cotton Mill, a giant, ginia and North Highland, Jaret wonders aloud if the area can red brick factory whose twin smokestacks still tower over the support the countless new restaurants and shops that have mill town that once flourished around it, was one of the largest sprung up recently to signal the end of a short-lived neighbor- factories in the city, employing as many as 500 workers. Built hood decline. J. before the Civil War as a cannon factory, the mill ironically Driving past Ansley Mall, once the city's most successfal produced many of the weapons used by the north in its war shopping center, Jaret discusses the social revolution caused utsrpnfe\ff against the south. the opening of Atlanta's first 24-hour grocery store. In Ansley The lives of mill workers were so completely dominated Park, he says, the turn of the century development was the by their employer that factory bells woke them for work in the city's first to be built with "the pleasure of the motorist, (p morning and sent them home for dinner at night When workers mind." To allow its wealthy residents to fully enjoy auto tours went on strike, the factory not only stopped paying their sal- through the hilly, tree-filled development, designers had dozens aries, it evicted them from their company-owned homes. Dur- of traffic circles built to ensure the smooth flow of traffic. ^ ing one such strike, the workers set up a tent city in Grant Driving south on Peachtree Street, Jaret speaks of the no- Park, where they lived during the four months it took to settle torious 'Tight Squeeze" strip that was host to successive the strike. "scenes" of hippies, motorcycle gangs and pornographic en- Jaret says that Inman Park was built in the 1890s for the trepreneurs before being "cleaned up" in recent years wealthiest citizens of Atlanta, including Asa Candler, whose Soon Jaret is wheeling past the "first Coca-Cola bottling family mansion still stands at the corner of Euclid and Eliza- company," now the GSU Baptist Students' Center on Courtlapd beth streets. By 1970, it was among the very poorest neighbor Street, through the old "Vulture's Nest" red-light district off hoods in the city. Whitehall Street and across the "railroad gulch" that separates Once-proud, single-family mansions housed as many as 30 downtown Atlanta from the mostly black, southeastern side of people in the early 70s when Atlanta's new elite began buying the city. up property for renovation. Inman Park's early reign as Atlan- "The gulch was a physical barrier meant to control access ta's most exclusive residential area was short-lived, Jaret says. and keep blacks separate in what was a rigidly segregated The Druid Hills and Ansley Park developments soon lured the city," Jaret says. Crossing the gulch. Jaret drives through the privileged, including the Candlers, away from Inman Park. Atlanta University complex, past the hilltop mansion built by The tour continues through Little Five Points, a revital- Atlanta Life Insurance founder Alonzo Hearndon and downhill ized neighborhood that suffered a long depression after its brief to Vine City, one of the poorest neighborhoods in Atlanta. Qn flowering as one of the most prosperous commercial centers in Subset Avenue he passes the homes of Corretta Scott King and the city. After a lunch break in the Little Five Points Pub* Julian Bond. Jaret drives through the working class district of Candler Park Following a brief tour of West End and Cascade Heightg, into ''aristocratic" Druid Hills. Jaret drives to "the old 5th Ward," off the Bankhead Highway Built on the north and south sides of Ponce de Leon Ave- "From about 1910 to 1920, Atlanta's industrial work force liv$d nue, the mansions of Druid Hills were home to the city's "best" here," Jaret says. The neighborhood, a strong union center, suj>- families. Landscape architect Frederick Olmstead, the man ported striking street car drivers in 1916 by placing snipers in who designed New York's Central Park and helped plan Atlan- trees throughout the 5th Ward to take potshots at strike-break- ta's Piedmont Park, "offered suggestions" to Druid Hills devel- ers hired by the company to keep the cars rolling. .