Anti-Gravity Monument
Emory University
Businessman and engineer Roger W. Babson considered gravity “enemy number one,” so he launched the Gravity Research Foundation in 1949 in order to figure out how to control it. As part of his outreach, he erected monuments at more than a dozen universities, including Emory in 1962. This rose-colored marker and stone bench currently stand in a quiet, wooded area located—optimistically—behind the Mathematics and Science Center.
Adalanta Desert
Westside Provisions District
JCT Kitchen & Bar is just steps from a portal to an alternate universe called Kcymaerxthaere. Hung among power panels on the bottom level of the Westside Provisions building is a plaque commemorating an imaginary place called Adalanta Desert. Installed in 2006, the plaque is a page in a “work of three-dimensional fiction” and part of a global art installation by Eames Demetrios (grandson of design icons Charles and Ray Eames).
Mt. Olive Cemetery
Frankie Allen Park
Just inside Buckhead’s Frankie Allen Park (home of Buckhead Baseball) is Mt. Olive Cemetery, the only remnant of a community established by former slaves after the Civil War, later named Macedonia Park. The cemetery was threatened by a developer in 2009, and Elon Butts Osby, who has ancestors buried there, joined with the Buckhead Heritage Society to protect it. It’s still unmarked and overgrown, but a prominent headstone was recently repaired.
Roswell Cherokee Memorial
Riverside Park
Just as Roswell was being settled by Roswell King in the 1830s, thousands of Cherokees were being forced from their homes and sent to Oklahoma on the grueling Trail of Tears. After researching her husband’s Cherokee roots, Cindi Crane worked with the Roswell Historical Society to place eight boulders along the Chattahoochee in Riverside Park last year, each bearing a plaque telling this overlooked part of Roswell’s history.
This article originally appeared in our February 2015 issue as a part of Hidden Atlanta under “Set in Stone.”
