For the second time in twenty years, the National Trust for Historic Preservation has put the Sweet Auburn district—once Atlanta’s center of African American business and culture—on its “endangered” list. Read More

The dedication of Georgia’s new Capitol on July 4, 1889 was an exercise in mixed metaphors. The ceremony, a grand legislative procession from the lawmakers’ temporary digs in an opera house on Marietta Street to the gilded edifice six blocks away, was carefully staged to symbolize democracy as an institution. Read More

The Georgian Terrace Hotel was completed in 1911 at a cost of $500,000. Early guests included Clark Gable, Carole Lombard, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tallulah Bankhead, Charles Lindbergh, and President Calvin Coolidge. Read More

It took $12 million to transform a 276-acre dairy farm west of Downtown into the Southeast’s first theme park; that Magic Kingdom down in Orlando wouldn’t open for four years. But all the clearing and construction didn’t eradicate the red clay and scrubby pines of the Cobb County surroundings when Six Flags Over Georgia opened for business on June 16, 1967. That rustic flavor added to the verisimilitude of Six Flags Over Georgia’s prime attractions: the Dahlonega Mine Train roller coaster, which hurtled from a thirty-seven-foot peak, and the Tales of the Okefenokee boat ride, which took passengers past slightly creepy scenes based on Joel Chandler Harris fables. Read More

When Lenox Square opened in August 1959, it was not just the first mall in Atlanta but the first in the entire region. Read More