Grant Park
Designated:
Historic District
April
11, 2000
District
14, Land Lots 21, 22, 23, 42
43,
44, 54 and 53
Fulton County, City of Atlanta
Existing Zoning R5, RG-2, RG-3, C-1, C-1-C,
C-2, C-2-C, OI, OI-C, I-1 and I-1-C
Physical Description Developmental History Architecture References Criteria Findings District Map
Physical
Description
The Grant Park neighborhood was built around Grant Park, a 131-acre green space and recreational area. One of Atlanta’s oldest residential neighborhoods, it occupies over 430 acres of rolling terrain southeast Atlanta. The majority of the structures in the Grant Park neighborhood are residential but the area also includes the school buildings, churches, neighborhood commercial clusters and recreational buildings that have served the historic neighborhood. Rambling Victorian era mansions and small cottages, early twentieth century bungalows and many brick paved sidewalks characterize the neighborhood. A majority of the structures were built from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century. Large two-story mansions were constructed face the park, more modest two-story, modified Queen Anne, frame dwellings were constructed on surrounding streets, one-story Victorian era cottages and Craftsman bungalows predominate in the streets to the east of the park.
Grant Park’s distinctive landscape includes rolling hills and scenic vistas. The neighborhood’s grid street pattern and narrow rectangular lots which developed during the 1890s and early 1900s are representative of Atlanta residential plans of this era. The streets are lined with mature trees and there is an extensive sidewalk system, portions of which are the original brick. Due to the topography, retaining walls are an important landscape feature.
Throughout its existence, Grant Park has provided a respite for the city dweller as a place for recreation and amusement. The neighborhood’s retention of its street patterns, landscape architecture, and public amenities from its formative period of the late 19th and early 20th centuries contributes to the historic environment which makes Grant Park one of Atlanta’s most valuable and significant early residential districts.
Developmental
History: Cultural and Historical Significance
The
Grant Park neighborhood developed around the park land that Lemuel P. Grant
donated to the city on May 17, 1883.
Grant had purchased large tracts of land southeast of the city in the
1840s and later subdivided the property and sold the lots for residential
development.
Lemuel
Pratt Grant was born in Frankfurt, Maine in 1817. He began working for the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad
working his way up quickly in the business.
He was hired in 1840 to work as an assistant in the Georgia Railroad’s
corps of engineers. From 1840 until well into the 1870s, Grant continued his
involvement in railroad building, working for several lines including the
Central Railroad of Georgia, the Atlanta and West Point Railroad and Georgia
Western (now Georgia Pacific). Grant’s
contributions to the expanding rail lines in and around Atlanta made him a prominent
figure in the growth and expansion of the city as a transportation center. John Robert Smith, in his article on Grant
as a railroadman, states, “more perhaps than any other person, Lemuel Grant
sparked the development of the very rail system by which the City of Atlanta
was launched into greatness” (Atlanta Historical Journal, Summer 1980).
Grant
was made a colonel in the Confederate Army in 1862. During late 1863 and early 1864, Grant was responsible for the
design and construction of a system of defensive fortifications for the City of
Atlanta. A section of the main line of
these earthen breastworks bisected
some of Grant’s property that now lies within Grant Park and a southeast salient extended to the
southeast corner of the park where Fort Walker is still in evidence.
After
the war, Grant expanded his business career.
He continued his railroad activity (becoming an officer of several
lines), participated in early street railway building, developed his real
estate interests and served local government in several capacities. In 1869 Grant became a member of Atlanta’s
first Board of Education and was very active in the 1870s in establishing the
public school system in Atlanta. At one
time, Grant’s land holdings made him the largest landowner in southeast
Atlanta.
As
might be expected from its name, the neighborhood owes much of its development
primarily to decisions made by Lemuel Pratt Grant, particularly his decisions
first to buy large tracts of land southeast of the city in the 1840s and 1850s,
second, to hold the tract through the 1870s, and finally to subdivide and sell
them in the 1880s. A second formative
force has persistently influenced the area’s development: the growth and
resultant need for housing in Atlanta itself.
This growth alternately circumscribed and spurred the Neighborhood’s
growth through several eras, from the first streetcar lines up through the
building of the superhighway. The
interplay between the private decisions of Grant and landowners like him and
the public need for residential sites around the blossoming downtown districts
defines much of the development of the neighborhood.
Initially,
the early neighborhood must have seemed a nearly rural domain on the fringes of
bustling Atlanta. In the 1850s the city
founded its main cemetery, Oakland, on the north side of Fair Street (Memorial
Drive). Oakland Cemetery has ever since
defined most of the northern boundary for the neighborhood. The Georgia Railroad, from Atlanta’s earliest
days, has run only a few blocks north of Fair Street. Thus from the outset the city was pushing in upon Colonel Grant’s
land from the north and creating barriers to residential growth such as the
Fair Street artery, Oakland Cemetery, and the Georgia Railroad line.
The
Atlanta city limits in 1835 were a circle with a one-mile diameter centered at
the Zero Mile marker downtown. At that
time the city officially included only the far northwest portion of the future
neighborhood. Grant Park proper was an attractive amenity that encouraged suburban
development in the surrounding area.
Development in the western section of the neighborhood began in the
1880s after Grant subdivided and sold residential lots. By 1893 maps show that almost all of the
present day roads were designed, if not built.
In order to attract prospective home builders, developers used the
availability of amenities such as public transportation or recreational areas
to enhance their real estate and to make it more attractive to buyers. Grant must have known that a city recreational
area would increase the value of his property in this area, and he later worked
to extend the streetcar line out to Georgia Avenue to link his landholdings to
the downtown area.
In
1883, the Metropolitan Street Railway Company established a streetcar service
along what is now Park Avenue to a pavilion in Grant Park. Boulevard Avenue was extended southward into
the Grant Park neighborhood in 1893.
Street extensions and public transportation improvements resulted in
rapid growth for the entire Grant Park residential area. After about 1890 Grant
Park’s recreational facilities, and street rail service bringing Atlantans to
the zoo, had established the area as a popular residential and recreational
development. By 1902 there were street
railway lines along Fair Street (Memorial Drive), Woodward Avenue to Cherokee,
Hill and Grant Streets south to Augusta Avenue, Georgia Avenue east to the
park, and Cherokee south to Ormond.
The
parkland itself has always been open to all citizens. Grant placed no racial restrictions in the deed for the park, but
the zoo and cyclorama developed later and were restricted to allow whites
only. The Grant Park neighborhood was
once solidly white and composed exclusively of single family houses of the
middle and lower-middle classes. Today
the neighborhood has a diverse population that reflects the cultural makeup of
Atlanta. The lands around the park
annexed by the city in 1885 were soon subdivided and sold as residential
lots. As a result, much of the housing
in the community was built around the turn of the century or just thereafter.
By
1883, Grant’s plans to subdivide his land must have been well advanced, for in
May 17 of that year he donated to the City, the first one hundred acres of what
would become known as Grant Park. In 1885, by a uniform added distance from the
Zero Marker, the City extended its limits between one-half and one mile in
order to include the donated Park, and in the process, virtually all other land
owned by LP Grant. In 1888, a streetcar
line extended into the Park and in 1884 a rudimentary zoo appeared.
In
1889, Atlanta lumber merchant George V. Gress gave the City a collection of
former circus animals and buildings to house them in Grant Park. That was the
beginning of what was to become the Municipal Zoo, now Zoo Atlanta. In April, 1890, the City purchased 44 acres
from Grant to the north of the original tract in Land Lot 44 to bring the total
acreage of the park area to 131.5 acres.
In 1893, Mr. Gress donated The Cyclorama, a large circular painting of
the Battle of Atlanta, painted by German artists in Milwaukee, 1885-1886, to
the City and it was moved to Grant Park and housed in a circular, wood shingled
building, since replaced by a substantial masonry structure.
There
are several significant individuals that have been a part of the Grant Park
neighborhood. Of course there is Lemuel
P. Grant for whom the area is named for, who was instrumental in bringing the
railroad to Atlanta, a large landholder in the area, a prominent individual in
the area, and the person who donated his land for a park and recreation
area. There is also former Atlanta
Mayor William B. Hartsfield who resided in the Grant Park neighborhood at the
time of his election to mayor in the 1930s. Hartsfield for whom the Atlanta
International Airport is named strongly promoted the city as an airline
hub. The City Limits of Atlanta were
also greatly expanded during his administration.
Architectural
Significance
Grant
Park has a significant collection of historic houses reflecting various styles
of late Victorian and early 20th century residential housing trends.
Queen Anne and Folk Victorian styles are found dating from Grant Park’s
earliest period of development in the 1870s and 1880s. These were followed later by the Craftsman
bungalow, English Vernacular Revival as well as a few Shotgun and Double
Shotgun homes.
The
Queen Anne styled houses found in Grant Park are primarily homes with design
elements that include steep pitched irregular roof lines, asymmetrical massing,
turned front porch supports with decorative spindlework, and an occasional
turret. Leaded glass in the windows and
differently textured wooden shingles are also common in these relatively modest
homes and can be seen throughout the Grant Park neighborhood. Homes built in
the Queen Anne style were Georgia’s most popular residential homes in the 19th
century. There are many excellent
examples of the Queen Anne style home in Grant Park.
The
Folk Victorian homes in Grant Park are mostly one-story cottages and consist of
a house type that is either a gabled ell or has a central hallway. The decorative features added to the simple
folk house type define the style. Ornamental features in the form of
bric-a-brac, or gingerbread are added to the porch, gables, and around the door
and window casings.
There
are several clusters of homes constructed in the English Vernacular Revival
style scattered throughout Grant Park.
Although there are not many examples of the English Vernacular Revival
style in the neighborhood, it was a common style constructed throughout the
country from the early part of the twentieth century. The defining architectural characteristics include steeply
pitched roofs, brick exteriors often interspersed with stone, decorative half-timbering,
arched front entries, and asymmetrical front facades. The English Vernacular Revival resources constructed in Grant
Park are fairly modest examples of the style, which is in keeping with the
overall middle class setting of the neighborhood.
In
the early 20th century, the prevalent residential style is the
Craftsman bungalow. The Grant Park
neighborhood has many examples of this early style. The distinctive elements of this style include a low pitched roof
that is either front gabled or hipped thus giving a generally horizontal effect,
deep overhangs with exposed rafter ends, brackets, broad front gables, porches
that have short square columns set on heavy masonry piers extending to the
ground. Windows may have a multi-paned
sash over a large one-pane sash.
A folk style house known as the Shotgun and Double Shotgun was a popular house type in the south. There are a few examples found scattered around the north western and western side of the neighborhood. The houses are narrow gable-front dwellings one-room wide and three or more rooms long. The Shotgun houses in Grant Park are of a very simple design and little ornamentation.
The
community had two Italianate mansions, one of which is left standing. They were built in 1858 and 1871 and served
as family homes for Lemuel P. Grant. The 1858 house was located at 327 St. Paul Avenue and has been
damaged by fire and deterioration.
Historic photographs show that the house was rectangular with giant
order pilasters at each corner. The
roof was hipped with dormers and there was a heavy cornice supported by paired
brackets. The second Grant house, built
in 1871, is of stuccoed brick and frame and sits on the southwest corner of
Hill and Sydney Streets. It is a prominent visual feature of the district and
has Italianate wooden detailing in the eve brackets, porch posts with segmental
arches, and a round arch above the front door.
The
neighborhood has several churches scattered throughout the residential
area. While many are small twentieth
century structures, some are architecturally notable. For example, the former Georgia Avenue Presbyterian Church, on
the northwest corner of Grant Street and Georgia Avenue, is an early twentieth
century red-brick Gothic Revival building with pointed arch stained glass
windows, a crisply detailed crenellated corner turret, and a projecting Gothic
arched entrance porch. This structure
is now home to the congregations of the Georgia Avenue Church and the Southwest
Christian Fellowship. Diagonally across
Georgia Avenue on the southeast corner of Grant Street the monumental classical
portico of the buff-brick Mt. Olive Baptist Church (formerly Georgia Avenue
Baptist Church) (1921) provides an interesting visual contrast. Further north on Grant Street is an 1899 church
structure, the Neo-Romanesque, granite building that houses St. Paul United
Methodist Church.
There are three or four business nodes and about a dozen small individual structures within the Grant Park neighborhood. Most of the older buildings are from the early to mid 1900s. They are excellent examples of early neighborhood commercial structures, many are still being used for small independent businesses.
Atlanta City
Directories. Atlanta History Center,
Atlanta-Fulton County Public Library, Georgia Department of Archives and
History.
Atlanta
City Building Permits. Atlanta History
Center
Atlanta
History Center Library. File “Grant
Park”.
Atlanta
Historical Society Magazine:
XII, 4, 82
XVII, 1, 89
II, 8, 15
VII, 29, 182
X, 38, 2
XV, 4, 90
Atlanta Journal and Constitution, February 17, 1991 “Grant
Park: An Old Community Enjoys Revival, House by House,” Homefinder Section
Atlanta
Urban Design Commission Atlanta’s Lasting Landmarks, 1987.
Cyclorama National Register
Nomination form on file at the Atlanta Urban Design Commission.
Garrett, Franklin. Atlanta and Environs: A Chronicle of Its People and Events,
New York, Lewis Historical Publishing Co., Inc. 1954.
Lemuel P. Grant personality
file at The Atlanta History Center’s Library/Archives
Martin, Harold H. William
Berry Hartsfield, Mayor of Atlanta.
Athens, The University of Georgia Press, 1978.
Martin, Thomas H. Atlanta and Its Builders, Volumes 1 and 2,
Century Memorial Publishing Co., 1902
McAlester, Virginia and Lee.
A Field Guide to American Houses, New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Inc., 1984.
National
Register District Application for Grant Park
National
Register District Application for North Grant Park
Sanborn
Map Company. Fire Insurance Maps, 1895
through 1930.
White, Dana F. “Landscaped
Atlanta: The Romantic Tradition in Cemetery, Park, and Suburban Development,” The
Atlanta Historical Journal.
XXVI #2-3 (Summer/Fall 1982),
95-112.
Group
I (1) (2)
Group
II (1) (2) (5) (6) (8) (9) (11)
(12) (13)
Group
III (1) (2)
The proposed nomination of the Grant Park Historic District meets the above referenced specific criteria, as well as, the minimum criteria for a Historic District as set out in Section 16-20.004 of the Code of Ordinances of the City of Atlanta