Streetscape Palimpsest: A History of Georgia Avenue Old streetcar lines show how “racial inequality was built into the streets themselves”Ī map of streetcar tracks from the early 1920s shows how minuscule the city’s current light rail system is. Yellow represents the Southside, and purple is Summerhill. Then, Capitol Avenue was essentially the racial dividing line, with white schools, businesses, and other public institutions to the west and a black community to the east. To the west and south of that area, wealthy white businesspeople and government officials controlled what many referred to as “the Southside.” In the late 1800s, after the Civil War, what’s now considered the east side of Summerhill became “one of Atlanta’s first African-American enclaves” populated largely by freedmen and freedwomen.
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“Before World War II, Georgia Avenue was lined with grocery markets and restaurants, shoe repair shops and convenience stores, butchers and bakers and ice cream makers, even a movie theater,” she writes.īelow are a few key points from Davis’s research that shed light on the ups and downs that have made Summerhill what it is today. It’s planned to be part of a larger work. Georgia Avenue, from Pulliam Street to Martin Street, in 1892 Streetscape Palimpsest: A History of Georgia Avenueĭavis has recently been crafting the “ Streetscape Palimpsest: A History of Georgia Avenue,” a website dedicated to chronicling Georgia Avenue’s roller coaster existence. Marni Davis, associate professor of history at GSU. “Summerhill has undergone multiple sweeping metamorphoses over the past decades, from which Georgia Avenue was not spared,” writes Dr. What might be harder to remember, though, is that Summerhill-one of Atlanta’s oldest African-American neighborhoods-was also once flourishing with retail activity and diverse, communal pride, long before Georgia State University and developer Carter began transforming the area.
The reality, however, is that those desolate days weren’t long ago. With new Summerhill businesses opening, heavy machinery growling at construction sites, and a college football team settled into the former Major League Baseball stadium nearby, Georgia Avenue’s era as an abandoned, boarded-up retail strip might seem distant.
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