Atlanta history has captured my imagination (off and on) for many years, but Atlanta's slash-and-burn, headlong rush toward the future (that and some pretty significant vandalism during the middle of the 19th century) seemed to leave behind scarcely more than an oral tradition of the prior generation. To make matters worse, the scant physical remnants of Atlanta's past often proved difficult to locate given our city's obsessive/compulsive penchant for changing street names (even to the point of assigning different names to different parts of the same street). These and other civic idiosyncrasies have made my quest for erudition a frustrating one - until recently.
Whether it is because my career is now in commercial real estate or the fact that the mundane becomes more invigorating in middle age, I can't really say. But what I can say for certain is that the resources now available through the internet have done more to illuminate the physical features (both natural and man-made) of this city and its past than any I have found before.
Below are some Web sites where one can view some truly stunning historical photographs of, and interesting information on, commercial buildings in downtown Atlanta. I have provided multiple links to the same sites in anticipation of the inevitable changes in URL. If one link fails, maybe my instructions will lead you to the same source:
If this link doesn't work, go to: http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/cushman/siteGuide/siteMap.jsp Scroll down to "Browse", select "Location", scroll down to "United States" and click on "Georgia". http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/cushman/results/result.do?query=state%3A%22Georgia%22&action=browse
http://atlantatimemachine.com/index.htm
If these links don't work you can try accessing each collection individually at the following or through a word search:
Lane Brothers Photographers Collection: http://www.library.gsu.edu/spcoll/pages/pages.asp?ldID=105&guideID=552&ID=3964
Tracy O'Neal Collection:
http://www.library.gsu.edu/spcoll/pages/pages.asp?ldID=105&guideID=552&ID=3967
Notice that the construction of Plaza Park is just getting underway, and the land for the expressway is slowly being assembled (which doesn't seem to have affected the traffic at The Varsity).
If you venture north to Buckhead you can have a look at the Cherokee Town & Country Club on West Paces Ferry when it was still a private residence.
(Beware: you can absolutely gut the better part of a Saturday afternoon on this one.)
http://www.library.gsu.edu/maps/aerialatlas1949/html/map.htm
A great online cache of historical artifacts digitized for and sponsored by the office of Georgia Secretary of State, this collection has some quirky indexing, but it appears to be adding material regularly and of better quality than I recall from just a couple of years ago.
http://content.sos.state.ga.us/index.php
If this link fails, this may also be found by going to this page of The Library of Congress's Web site where you can go to Especially for Researchers and then to Research Centers then select Geography & Map. From the subsequent page, you select Online Map Collections from the "Digital Collections" heading. From there select Cities and Towns and figure it out from there.
http://patsabin.com/atlanta/postcards/
