digATL | The Digital Atlanta Portal

Formed in 1971, Research Atlanta was a non-profit organization established to study public policy issues affecting the Atlanta metropolitan area. Research Atlanta served as Atlanta’s think tank for urban problems and published policy studies from 1971 to 2006 on major urban issues confronted by metropolitan Atlanta and placed Atlanta’s urban problems within a national context. During its 35 years of operation Research Atlanta produced numerous public policy studies on issues ranging from public school desegregation to creating a downtown cultural district. In 1992, Georgia State University agreed to assume responsibility for operating Research Atlanta. In 2006, Research Atlanta merged with the Regional Leadership Forum and the Metro Group to form what is now the Civic League for Regional Atlanta. 

Black Neighborhoods and the Creation of Black Atlanta explores the history of Black neighborhoods in Atlanta. It provides an overview of several of these neighborhoods: Summerhill, Vine City, West End, Lightning, and Johnsontown. The exhibit highlights archival collections held in the Archives Research Center at the Atlanta University Center Robert W. Woodruff Library. Collections include the Maynard Jackson Mayoral Administrative records, the Atlanta Urban League papers, the Atlanta Community Relations Commission collection, the Grace Towns Hamilton papers, the Neighborhood Union collection, the John H. Calhoun, Jr. papers, the Samuel W. Williams papers, the Atlanta Neighborhood Planning vertical file, the Johnsontown Neighborhood collection, and the Vivian W. Henderson papers. Exhibit created by Brittany Newberry.

National Register of Historic Places Inventory nomination form submitted in 1980. Originally, the two-and-a-half-block area of the Underground district was a part of the larger gateway to the city. The history of this gateway to Atlanta mirrors the dynamic growth of the city as it expanded from a railroad and pedestrian town of the mid-nineteenth century into a regional automobile and air metropolis of the late-twentieth century. The Underground Atlanta Historic District consists of several components: an approximately two-block area of buildings bounded by Alabama Street, Central Avenue, Peachtree Street, and the rear lot lines of properties along the north side of Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive; viaducts on Central, Pryor, Alabama and Wall streets; store fronts along the north side of Alabama Street below the viaduct; the Georgia Railroad Freight Depot at the east end of Alabama Street; and the Zero Mile Post under the Central Avenue viaduct.

Focused on suburban residential developments in DeKalb County, Georgia between the end of World War II and 1970 in order to better understand the transformation of the area after the Second World War. The resource includes data on national residential trends, architectural and landscape designs, as well as information on metropolitan Atlanta. The resource was created to support the effort to preserve local neighborhoods, buildings, and landmarks by providing the historic context in which they were created.

Date created

Spring 2010

The Digital Archive of the Heritage Preservation Program (HPP) available in ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University is a compendium of student projects produced under the supervision of the HPP faculty from 1991 until the present. The Archive contains a variety of completed projects that document buildings and historic areas in and around Metropolitan Atlanta. The projects include Historic Structure Reports of historic or endangered buildings, Historic District Information Forms prepared for submission to the Georgia Historic Preservation Division for eventual National Register Designation, Design Guideline and Planning projects that are intended to assist communities and neighborhoods in making design decisions about Locally Designated Historic Districts and Historic Context studies that focus on a particular building type, period of development (developmental history) or particular community. These documents embody a wide variety of buildings, neighborhoods and communities across Metro Atlanta. They demonstrate the body of work accomplished by the students of the Heritage Preservation Program and are here to be utilized by anyone seeking to research historic places in and around Atlanta.

The Georgia Government Documentation Project (GGDP) documents the state’s political heritage through oral history interviews and collections of associated papers. The GGDP collection includes more than 250 interviews with former governors, legislators, women in politics, African American political activists and leaders, journalists, and numerous other public figures. In addition to the interviews generated by the project, the GGDP actively collects interviews conducted by other scholars of Georgia politics. Special Collections and Archives is continually working to digitize more interviews and add them to those already digitally available.

The Lucy Hargrett Draper Collections on Women’s Rights, Advocacy and the Law document state and national efforts to achieve equality for women. They include the Lucy Hargrett Draper U.S. Equal Rights Amendment (1921-1982) Research Collection, the Lucy Hargrett Draper Papers on Feminist Activism in U.S. Politics, the Lucy Hargrett Draper Papers on the Creation of Women’s Archives, the Lucy Hargrett Draper Papers on the Second U.S. Women’s Movement (1963-1982), the Lucy Hargrett Draper Papers on Institutional Reforms for Women and the U.S. Military, 1970-1984, the Lucy Hargrett Draper Artifact Collection, and the Lucy Hargrett Draper Personal Papers. 

Originally built in 1925 as one of the first parking garages in the city, the Ivy Street Garage was renovated and opened to students in 1946. In 1964, it was renamed Kell Hall to honor Wayne S. Kell, the original director of the school. Kell Hall was demolished and replaced with a campus greenway in 2021. On this website, you can browse the collections of digital items gathered, read about Kell Hall’s history, take a virtual tour of the building and contribute your own stories to the project. 

The Flat Rock community in southern DeKalb County, Georgia (just outside Atlanta) is one of the oldest continually-occupied African-American communities in Georgia. Although history shows that many African-American communities in the South were broken apart as former slaves migrated north in search of jobs and a more equitable life, Flat Rock remained an intact community. This was largely due to the efforts of individuals who were able to purchase land and later sell it in small parcels to fellow community members. Proximity—both to ancestors and significant places—is a cross-culturally important component to the creation of a sense of community. Placed on a high peak in DeKalb County, the Flat Rock Cemetery became such a place for the Flat Rock community. It contains burials dating from 1834 (three years prior to the official establishment of the community) through 1959. In the spring of 2008, Johnny Waits, president of the Flat Rock Archive, proposed a project to the members of the Greater Atlanta Archaeological Society (GAAS) involving the clearing and mapping of this historic cemetery. These initial meetings eventually led to the involvement of Georgia State University (GSU). Through the use of a total station, Jeffrey Glover of GSU and his students have been mapping the cemetery and conducting research into its material culture. The objectives of this project include completion of the cemetery map and the subsequent connection of identified graves to the archival data collected by Mr. Waits. These data will be integrated with photographic images of tombstones and material offerings, and will be established on GSU’s geospatial server using ESRI’s ArcServer. These interactive maps will be made accessible to visitors to the Flat Rock archive web site.

Student project from GSU Department of Geosciences. With more than 80,000 acres of tree cover inside the Perimeter, Atlanta leads the nation in urban tree cover; approximately 47% of the city has significant tree growth. Atlanta’s forest is home to over 50 species of native trees, which work to reduce carbon dioxide, produce oxygen, conserve and filter water, serve as habitats for native and endemic species throughout the Piedmont region, cool neighborhoods, and serve as recreational areas. In a city where the tree canopy is already being lost, is submerged in its own wastewater, is experiencing extreme climate change, including enhanced heatwaves, and other factors documented here, the current threat of deforestation has placed the city’s trees in an historically critical situation. Launched 2022; last accessed 2022-10-15 

Steve Eberhardt photographs the people and events (and animals) around Atlanta, Georgia. His work has appeared in Rolling Stone, The Economist, The Nation, and The Guardian. The collection consists of born-digital photographs of marches, demonstrations, and other community events in and around Atlanta from 2014 to 2020. Events include Senator Bernie Sanders at Morehouse College, the Peachtree Road Race, an Atlanta Beltline Lantern parade, the Hindu Festival of Chariots Parade, and numerous Black Lives Matter protests. This collection will continue to grow as more photographs are donated.

Interactive web map created by Georgia State University Library that invites researchers, students, and the public to visualize the extensive built environment and demographic changes that have occurred throughout our metropolitan region from the 1940s to the present. The project provides aerial imagery overlays of the five core metropolitan counties – Fulton, DeKalb, Cobb, Gwinnett, and Clayton – documenting over eight decades of growth and change in our region. Also included are census tract level population and housing data, providing additional context to these visualizations. Among the changing patterns revealed are the dramatic growth of the suburbs, decline in agricultural areas, decline and rebuilding of the urban core, and shifting racial and housing patterns.