A History of Hurt Park

A History of Hurt Park Tommy Hart Jones for Georgia State University September1998 revised April 2008 2 When Hurt Park opened in 1940, it was were oriented to existing roads and to the the City’s first downtown park since the railroad as it angled across the individual 1860s and represented one of the great land lots rather than orienting the new achievements of Mayor William B. Harts- roads to the points of the compass. As a field’s first administration. Over a five year result of their individual actions, wherever period between 1937 and 1942, the City these artificial street grids intersected ad- transformed its ageing municipal audito- jacent land lot lines or existing roads, a rium and the surrounding area into a civic series of unique triangular blocks was cre- center that befitted Atlanta’s rising status ated. The intersections of Gilmer Street as a convention center. This New Deal-era and Collins Street (now Courtland Street), civic center, with Hurt Park as its formal Gilmer and Ivy Street (now Peachtree forecourt, served the City for thirty years Center Avenue), and Collins and Ivy with until the present Civic Center was created the east-west boundary line between Land north of downtown in 1968. Lots 51 and 52 provided the initial triangu- lated imprint for the Hurt Park site. In Funded in part by the Woodruff Founda- 1886, Edgewood Avenue would be laid out tion and planned in part by the WPA, Hurt along that line between Land Lots 51 and Park and its fountain were designed by the 51. noted landscape architect William C. Pauley and were among downtown At- Four city streets flank Hurt Park but only lanta’s most popular attractions through- three were part of the City’s original plan: out the 1940s and 1950s. Hurt Park was Ivy1, Collins and Gilmer. Ivy Street, which one of only a handful of important con- clips the western end of the Hurt Park tri- struction projects in downtown Atlanta angle, was named for Hardy Ivy (1780- during the Great Depression, and it re- 1842), Atlanta’s “first” pioneer and owner mains one of the City’s most important landmarks from the period between the two World Wars. The Original Block Located just two blocks east of Five Points, the 1.6+ acres of land that are now Hurt Park are part of Land Lot 52, 14th District, one of four land lots (51, 52, 77, and 78) that encompass all of the present downtown business district. When Atlanta’s third rail line was completed in 1846 and it became clear to the few hundred residents here that the town would continue to grow, the owners of these land lots quickly subdivided their property and laid out streets that created the original plan of the City of Atlanta. Land Lot 52 was owned by Lemuel P. Grant, then living in Decatur but soon to be one of Atlanta’s best-known residents. Figure 1. Detail from L. P. Grant’s “Sketch of the City of Atlanta and Line of Defenses,” 1864, with In order to maximize their land values, arrow denoting location of Hurt Park. The dashed Grant and the other owners subdivided lines represent land-lot lines which, with the railroad, their property and laid off streets that determined the orientation of the street grids. (Atlanta History Center) 3 of Land Lot 51 in the 1830s and 1840s. On while lots 159 and 160 were more- the southeastern side of the Hurt Park site conventional rectangular lots on Gilmer at was Collins Street, named for James A. the corner with Collins. As early as the Collins, one of the City’s early merchants. 1850s and certainly by 1868, these lots In the wake of the transformation of the and several others in the area were owned southern end of the street into a red-light by the Lynches, a large Irish family that district after the Civil War, it was renamed had immigrated from County Meath in the Courtland Street in the 1880s. Gilmer early 1830s and settled in Atlanta in the Street, which runs from northwest to late 1840s. One of the five brothers in this southeast parallel with the railroad, inter- family, Patrick Lynch, was a “rock contrac- sected Collins Street on the crest of a tor” who operated a quarry on Rock Street small hill that is an extension of the and is credited with constructing the foun- Peachtree Ridge. The street was named dation of the Shrine of the Immaculate for George Rockingham Gilmer (1790- Conception (1869) and the first Fulton 1859), who oversaw construction of the County Courthouse (1854). Peter Lynch, fort at Standing Peachtree in 1813 and the younger brother, and later his son Pe- was Governor of Georgia as Terminus was ter, Jr., operated a well-known saloon in being staked out in 1837. Atlanta in the nineteenth century. John and James Lynch worked as common rail- The Hurt Park site comprises most of four road laborers prior to their arrival in At- original city lots (62, 159, 160, and 161), lanta but by the time of the Civil War were each of which contained around a half acre prominent merchants in the city.2 They of land and were intended as residential were particularly successful, amassing building lots. Lots 62 and 161 were trian- small fortunes of over $150,000 by the gular lots at either end of the park site 1870s, and are noted as rare examples of Figure 2. Detail from Ruger’s bird’s-eye view of Atlanta, 1871, with site of Hurt Park indicated by the arrow. The houses built by the Lynches already lined the northeast side of Gilmer, but Edgewood Avenue had not yet been constructed. (Atlanta History Center) 4 common laborers working their way to wealth in nineteenth-century Atlanta.3 James Lynch built a house on the present Hurt Park site, probably at the corner of Gilmer and Collins, as did Michael and probably Patrick as well.4 Their houses may have survived the Civil War, as many did in that part of town, but in any case, five houses, stables, and other structures, some of them constructed of brick, had been built by the Lynches along the north side of Gilmer Street by 1871. Many of those buildings remained standing in 1939. Joel Hurt The park was named for Joel Hurt, one of the most influential figures in Atlanta in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Born at Hurtsboro, Alabama, southwest of Columbus, Georgia, in 1850, Hurt was trained as a civil engineer and spent the early 1870s surveying new rail- roads in the West. By the mid-1870s, Hurt was in Atlanta where some of his father’s cousins had bought adjoining plantations on the Georgia Railroad in the vicinity of Figure 3. View east at Five Points, showing construc- present-day Inman Park and Reynolds- 5 tion of the city’s first electric streetcar line along Ed- town before the Civil War. gewood Avenue. Joel Hurt’s Equitable Building, under construction, is visible in the background. (Atlanta Hurt quickly became active in real estate History Center) and insurance, organizing the Atlanta Building and Loan Association in 1875, At- lanta's first successful venture of its kind downtown and Inman Park, however, re- and through which over five hundred quired the creation of Edgewood Avenue, houses were built in the city in the late which was perhaps the most daunting task nineteenth century. By the early 1880s, undertaken by Hurt’s East Atlanta Land Joel Hurt had conceived an ambitious plan Company.6 that included construction of the South’s and the City’s first steel-framed sky- While there had always been a “Five scraper, the old Equitable Building, which Points” downtown where Decatur and Ma- was completed in 1891; development of rietta Streets intersected Peachtree, the the city's first picturesque garden suburb, other street that created the intersection Inman Park, which began development in ran only one block to Pryor Street (now 1889; and creation of the city's first elec- Park Place) where it then followed the pre- tric streetcar line, the Atlanta & Edgewood sent route of Exchange Place to its dead Street Railway, which made its first run in end at Ivy Street. Following the land lot August 1889 and was touted as "a bene- line between Peachtree and Pryor, Line diction to drivers who have clattered over Street, as it was called, did nothing to al- stones and dodged vehicles in town in a low east-side commuters easy access to vain effort to get sweetness and light in and from downtown. In order to open his their daily ride." Construction of the boulevard to Inman Park, Hurt persuaded planned electric street car line between the City to condemn the built-up land 5 Figure 4. Detail from Sanborn Fire Insurance maps of Atlanta, 1911. (Georgia State University) along the land lot line between Pryor and western end of the block to Joel Hurt’s Butler Street. With that, Line Street could East Atlanta Land Company, which pro- be connected to Foster Street, which fol- ceeded to construct a three-story brick lowed the same line east of Butler Street office building on the site.8 and which Hurt was able to improve and extend into Inman Park. So important was Named for the community that had grown this project to Hurt’s vision for Inman Park up in the 1870s and '80s along the rail- that he agreed to pay for any costs above road in the vicinity of the Hurt cousins’ $20,000 that might be incurred by the City plantations, Edgewood Avenue was in clearing the land, while the East Atlanta opened in September 1888, with great Land Company would foot the entire bill fanfare and with speeches by Gen.

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