digATL | The Digital Atlanta Portal

Atlanta, a new city established by the railroads in the 19th century and transformed by the automobile in the 20th century, was built first for the movement of goods and then later for people, not unlike most industrial U.S. cities. As the city managed tremendous growth and the rise of the automobile, city planners and visionaries sought to alleviate traffic and safety concerns at the city’s numerous rail crossings by building a series of viaducts and raised streets, thus creating an “elevated city” in portions of downtown. This idea spread as city planners envisioned a platform city where automobiles, streetcars, and pedestrians could move freely on elevated concrete and steel platforms above the “grimy” and “smoky” congestion-causing railway lines. Today’s Underground Atlanta is a result of such initiatives, namely the twin viaducts project of 1927-1929, which elevated the streets around then Union Station (1871-1930) in the heart of downtown. During this time, one visionary architect, Haralson Bleckley, championed the idea of an extended raised city plaza to cover much downtown, a dream that was never realized. Later in the 1960s, a new university for downtown Atlanta, Georgia State College (now University), developed plans to build a “Plaza Campus” with elevated pedestrian platforms above the noise and inconvenience of city traffic. Other visionary architects followed, envisioning Atlanta as an elevated city of the future. While these plans may have been forward thinking, many were also aligned with, if not partially driven by, urban renewal efforts of city leaders. More recently, ambitious urban revitalization projects such as Centennial Yards, which will transform Atlanta’s railroad Gulch, and The Stitch, with plans to cover the multi-lane interstate Connector from Downtown to Midtown, seek to connect people and communities on elevated plazas and platforms above Atlanta’s “least attractive” (The Gulch) and most congested (Downtown Connector) areas — or as Bleckley put it in 1915 in describing Atlanta’s railway tracks and yards, “the grimy chasm that scars Atlanta’s beauty.”

Digital tour of the rise and fall of the bawdy brothels that lined Downtown Atlanta’s Collins Street from the late 1800s to the early 1900s—showcasing tantalizing tidbits from newspapers, census records, city directories, property records, maps, and more from Georgia State University Library’s digital resources. Walk the streets (well, not like that!) and transport your imagination back to those bygone days when sin and Southern hospitality went hand in hand. Launched Spring 2022.

Georgia State University students map Atlanta’s past. This website is produced by Dr. Marni Davis and her students at the downtown Atlanta campus of Georgia State University. GSU has been part of downtown Atlanta since 1913, when it was founded to offer evening courses in business and commerce. As GSU grew, so did its presence in the city. Today, GSU’s downtown campus includes historic buildings and neighborhoods, brand new buildings and public space, urban renewal project areas, and an Olympic stadium. But cities are always built on top of history. What was here before GSU’s campus as we know it? If the past is invisible to us at street level, how can we make it visible?

Digital project that investigates the history of Georgia Avenue, which once served as an important commercial thoroughfare in the neighborhoods south of downtown Atlanta, and is now the southern edge of GSU’s campus. This interactive historical narrative rediscovers a neighborhood that was entirely replaced by urban renewal projects, and explains why Summerhill, and other “stadium neighborhoods” in Atlanta, were so thoroughly transformed over the course of the twentieth century. 

Beginning in 1960, the Atlanta sit-in movement took over the downtown area of the city. Follow this tour to see where student activists conducted their peaceful protests and sat down to stand up for what they believed in. You’ll learn about major players and events of the movement while visiting the actual sites where they happened. Historic photos and descriptions will help you see what the protestors saw and take you back to this time of energy and passion in Atlanta’s past. Created Spring 2019.

Founded in 1913, Georgia State University grew as it supported the educational needs of Atlanta and the state of Georgia. Originally an evening program intended for the Atlanta business community, the school achieved university status in 1969. With this new phase of academic growth, the administration focused on expanding the University Library’s ability to support advanced research. The Library’s Special Collections and Archives launched formally in 1971, with the mission of collecting rare and unique primary source material to support teaching and scholarship. Our first collections directly engaged the research needs of our faculty and students focusing on the people, communities, and events that shaped modern-day Atlanta, Georgia, and the New South. This focus on documenting the sometimes contentious, too often racist and sexist, but always fascinating story of modern-day Atlanta has led us to seek out and preserve the stories of everyday people. The stories maintained in our archives are not just of the powerful and famous, they are the stories of everyday people who recognized injustice and organized their peers, family, coworkers, and lives around rectifying that injustice and making Atlanta a more equitable city. Fifty years ago, our collections started with one box and a single collecting focus on southern labor unions. As our collecting areas have grown from one to nine, so has the department. Today our collecting areas — Southern Labor, Photographs, Women’s, Gender & Sexuality, Music & Radio Broadcasting, Social Change, Rare Books, Pulp Literature, and University Archives — consist of 8 miles of materials and several terabytes of digital content. Georgia State’s Special Collections & Archives gives researchers an in-depth view of life in 20th and 21st Century Atlanta and the Greater Southeast Region. This expansion of collecting has been possible only through creating connections to passionately engaged community partners. From the LGBTQ Institute and We Love BuHi to the Atlanta Journal Constitution and the AFL-CIO, Special Collections builds relationships with communities all over Atlanta and the South. The collections entrusted to us document the stories, accomplishments, and struggles of those communities. Bridging Communities introduces a few stories found in our collections, such as the women who organized domestic workers for basic work protections; a woman who recognized a need to support families of incarcerated mothers; a sanitation workers’ strike protesting continued discrimination in hiring and promotions, poor working conditions, and low pay; women fighting for equal rights; the University’s struggle with racial tensions on campus; a grassroots campaign to retain the musical director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra; and organizations working to assist the homeless and other marginalized groups. This exhibit is a testament to the important role archives play within the communities they serve.

Granite, limestone, and marble building stones are found in a 20-block area that is centered around the beginning of Peachtree Street. These three commercial types encompass a much greater range of rocks. Granite, limestone, marble, travertine, dolomite, serpentine, larvakite, gabbro, and gneiss are among the rock types found within the 50 varieties of commercial building stones used in the area. A map has been prepared of the area and specific sites of geological interest have been identified. The building name is given in the descriptions of the buildings and rocks found in the area so that they may be located easily. Only the three commercial rocks names will be used in the tour so that one can look at the rock samples and try to determine their true nature. The tour originates at Georgia State University, 33 Gilmer Street, Atlanta, GA. Walking tour created by Dr. Bob Power, former GSU professor in Geosciences. Revised by Dr. Hassan Ali Babaie, GSU Associate Professor of Geosciences.

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.