A look at the mill-village roots of Atlanta’s Cabbagetown
The Hillville, a website about urban Appalachia, takes a nice look at the Cabbagetown neighborhood of Atlanta this week. The post touches on the history of the mill that anchored the community for decades:
Jacob Elsas, a German Jewish immigrant, built the Fulton Bag and Cotton Mill in Atlanta’s east end during a post-Reconstruction boom. He also built a small community of one- and two-story shotgun and cottage houses for the 2,500 workers, who were largely poor, rural whites from North Georgia.
Residents brought with them traditions that flavored life in the village, like hill-country cookin’. Legend has it the area got its name because so many grew cabbage in their front yards and the odor of them simmering on stove tops wafted through the air.
The piece also explores the musical heritage of Cabbagetown, a place closely associated with mountain music thanks to early resident and country legend Fiddlin’ John Carson.
…with all the transformation, Cabbagetown’s history lingers. Those who are looking can find glimpses of its mountain past in photos, festivals, architecture and stories. But it may be best memorialized in music. It was, after all, once dubbed the cradle of country.
100 year old building in downtown Atlanta gets new life
I’ve always liked this cute little three-story building at 140 Peachtree Street, across from the central library downtown (a third story is underground). I’d read before that it was taller originally, but I had no idea that it was once eight stories high!
An article in the Atlanta Business Chronicle gives some history of the building and the story of the current tenants, Breen Smith Advertising LLC, who took a chance on it instead of going with a more traditional space in a more modern office tower.
Built in 1911 with eight stories, 140 Peachtree originally housed Hillyer Trust Company, one of Atlanta’s first banks. Until 1977, it held the distinction as “the narrowest high rise office building in the United States.”
That’s what I love about Atlanta history — I’m learning new things all the time. Take a look at the great photos that accompany the article.
View from the Carter Center, Atlanta
This is a great shot of the Bank of America building as seen from the grounds of the Carter Center. The photo comes from Instagram user Abudeir.
If you’ve never been, I highly recommend a visit to the Jimmy Carter Library & Museum at the Carter Center. The museum was impressively updated a few years ago and the well-tended grounds behind it are, as you can see, lovely. The view of Atlanta’s skyscrapers is a bonus.
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An urbanist blogger from Savannah visited Atlanta earlier this year and shared some thoughts about the startling presence of car infrastructure (and lack of pedestrians) in the middle of the city.
A quote:
…notice how much real estate is given over to temporarily storing cars. And, this is a city with a fairly robust rail transit system. MARTA certainly has its flaws, but as the last true subway/heavy rail system built in America, it’s more than most cities have.
To be fair, he’s coming from a city that has one of the most walkable districts in the US, so Atlanta’s bound to be a strong contrast. And he doesn’t mention (or maybe doesn’t know) that there are lots of spots not far from here with a nice amount of pedestrian activity, particularly in my downtown Fairlie-Poplar area and the Peachtree Street corridor further north of the spot pictured above.
Nonetheless, I think he raises some solid points about many central parts of the city containing too damn much car infrastructure via parking facilities and highway on/off ramps. This patch south of North Avenue in particular is a real dead zone, something I’ve noticed many times myself on my regular walks through here.
I’d love to see Atlanta leaders focus on lessening the impact of cars on this area.
A recent Atlantic Cities post, How and Why American Cities Are Coming Back, contains a quote that I thought was particularly relevant to the current discussions about transportation funding and sprawl in the Atlanta region.
Alan Ehrenhalt, author of The Great Inversion and the Future of the American City, had this to say about the power in metropolitan areas shifting away from suburbs and back to the cities, specifically in Atlanta:
“In Atlanta, virtually no newcomers from foreign countries settle within the city limits anymore; they all go to suburbs like Gwinnett and Cobb counties. Meanwhile, neighborhoods in the center are gaining population and becoming more expensive to live in. I believe that the problem for central cities in the coming years won’t be creating a demand to live there; it will be creating a supply of housing adequate to meet the demand.”
The transit lines on the Atlanta region’s TSPLOST project list, while very useful for the urban ‘haves’, are going to be of little use to suburban ‘have nots’ who can’t afford to own a car. particularly if intown home values continue creeping ever more out of reach of middle and lower income families.
Ehrenhalt also says this:
“…we are living at a moment in which the massive outward migration that characterized the second half of the twentieth century is coming to an end…we need to adjust our perceptions of cities, suburbs, and urban mobility as a result.”
The old Atlanta model of low-income people in the city center and middle/upper income people in the suburbs has become muddled and more complex and will likely continue to do so.
For this reason (and more), leaders should focus on a retrofit of the suburban environment to make it more walkable and thus more accommodating to non-car transportation choices. And also maintain and build affordable housing choices intown near existing and future metro Atlanta transit lines.
Photo of MARTA station by Flickr user jamc70076 | Photo of Cobb County pedestrian by Transportation for America
Busy Atlanta Weekend
There’s so much going on intown this weekend, I’m having trouble keeping it straight. We’ve got:
…and much more.
Anyone who says there’s nothing exciting in Atlanta has their head stuck in the ground.
I’d also like to plug something else: it’s the one year anniversary of Little’s Food Store in Cabbagetown (the current ownership, anyway), my favorite little grocery store/restaurant in the city. Give them a visit. It’s a great urban store.