History

Cabbagetown’s Fulton Cotton Mill Lofts have only been around about two decades, but the building’s origin dates back to the late 1800s, when immigrant Jacob Elsas started the Fulton Cotton Spinning Company.

In 1916, a former Ford retail sales manager named Ernest Beaudry was already purchasing and selling Ford Model T automobiles on his own when he ran an ad in the Atlanta Constitution announcing the opening of Atlanta’s first Ford dealership.

The Castle has been attracting attention throughout Atlanta ever since its construction began around 1909. The unusual house was designed and built by Ferdinand McMillan, a wealthy agricultural supplier, as his retirement home.

My older brother Mike came home unexpectedly early from college in 1970. His classmates had just shut Princeton down – a show of solidarity with student protests spreading across America.

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2012, Buckhead’s Sardis Cemetery remains historically significant as an example of a standard 19th-century Southern folk burial ground. Although the Sardis Methodist Church building was completed in 1927, the cemetery predates back to 1869.

For weeks I was excited about the royal wedding – planning a viewing party, watching every show, devouring every article. I couldn’t get enough.

Memorial Day brings to mind cookouts, parades and an excuse for a three-day weekend. But do you know the true meaning behind the day?

In 1913, Atlanta’s first luxurious high-rise apartments opened at the corner of Ponce de Leon Avenue and Peachtree Street. The timing of the Ponce de Leon Apartments’ opening was perfect – more Atlantans were moving north as it was becoming less fashionable to live downtown.

Atlanta’s famous African American educator and race leader John Hope was born into an elite black family. His father, a white businessman, and his free-born black mother lived as an unmarried couple because Georgia law prohibited interracial marriages.

Atlanta’s New Hope African Methodist Episcopal Church dates back to 1869 when African Americans began gathering to worship at “camp meetings” at the New Hope Camp Ground.

Before the Galloway School was formed, the prominent Neoclassical building in Chastain Park served as a white poorhouse for the county.

Politics aside, the recent passing of Barbara Bush struck a chord. Beyond her place in history as a first lady and a mother of a president, the obvious white hair and her ferocious love of reading, I feel like I got to know her last week.

In the early 1950s, the newly formed Atlanta Figure Skating Club was already a U.S. Figure Skating member, but its growing number of members were practicing in a wrestling arena garage.

In the heart of downtown Atlanta stands a 127-year-old, 10-foot bronze statue. The monument was erected to honor Henry W. Grady – the journalist known as the “Spokesman of the New South” who helped reintegrate the Confederate states following the Civil War.

My favorite part of attending the Midtown Alliance annual meeting was its slide show, contrasting today’s trendy, business-fueled Atlanta neighborhood with that dark time in the 1970s when Peachtree & 14th streets were … The Strip.

Known as the greatest amateur golfer ever, Bobby Jones was born in Atlanta in 1902. Bobby was named a golf prodigy after entering his first national competition at 14, but his career didn’t truly take off until seven years later when he won the U.S. Open.

In 1895, nearly 800,000 visitors gathered in Piedmont Park for the Cotton States and International Exposition.

According to the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation, the Buckhead building that once housed the Southeast’s first library bindery is in peril.

Celebrated on March 17 in observance of the death of the patron saint of Ireland, St. Patrick’s Day is full of shamrocks, leprechauns and green galore.

Today marks the 128th anniversary of the birth of one of Atlanta’s greatest – and longest-running – mayors.

Atlanta’s first library opened in 1902, but it wasn’t until 1921 that African Americans had library access. And it wasn’t until decades later that they had access to the same branches as whites.

Immediately after the Great Recession, commercial real estate investors focused on New York and a few other major markets. Things were quiet in Atlanta for years. Not anymore.

With one invention, Frank Mason Robinson changed not only the history of Coca-Cola, but also advertising.

In the 1920s, Sweet Auburn Curb Market was the center of Atlanta – not only geographically, but in terms of shopping.

I was the closest human to The Temple on Peachtree Street when it was bombed in October 1958 – but I had nothing to do with it. My family had just moved into a first-floor apartment immediately south of Atlanta’s oldest synagogue when the explosion occurred in the middle of the night. I was an infant, asleep on the back porch.

Low ticket sales forced Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus to end its 146-year-old run last year, but during the early 20th century, the circus was one of our city’s most anticipated events.

This month marks 60 years since the launch of the Love, Law and Liberation (Triple L) Movement. Inspired by the successful Montgomery bus boycott, a group of African-American ministers, led by Rev. William Holmes Borders, decided to recreate a similar protest in Atlanta.

The Vietnam War forever changed the 3.5 million men and women who served in Southeast Asia from 1964-1975.

The month before the 1969 Woodstock Festival, Atlanta hosted the inaugural Atlanta International Pop Festival. Although it never reached Woodstock’s iconic status, the festival featured a similar lineup, including headliner Janis Joplin.

Ebenezer Baptist Church was first founded in 1886, but it wasn’t until the 1960s when it gained international fame – thanks to its famous member, Martin Luther King Jr.