Atlanta's Parks and Monuments
()
About this ebook
Rodney Mims Cook Jr.
Atlanta fifth-generation son Rodney Mims Cook Jr. has grown up with Atlanta history, as his family has stewarded the city since arriving in the 1820s. At 14, he helped initiate the �Save the Fox Theatre� movement. He is president of the National Monuments Foundation, whose images are showcased within these pages, a founding trustee of the Prince of Wales�s Foundation for Architecture, and the builder of the Prince of Wales�s Monument to the Centennial Olympic Games and the Millennium Gate Arch.
Related to Atlanta's Parks and Monuments
Related ebooks
Inman Park Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Atlanta Scenes: Photojournalism in the Atlanta History Center Collection Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cleveland: 1930-2000 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOld Fort Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHistoric Oakland Cemetery Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNorth Augusta:: James U. Jackson's Dream Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsValhalla Memorial Park: The Unauthorized Guide Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGhosts of Alexandria Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWicked Hartford Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHeadstones of Heroes: The Restoration and History of Confederate Graves in Atlanta's Oakland Cemetery Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLost Metairie Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAtlanta: A Portrait of the Civil War Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGhosts of Atlanta: Phantoms of the Phoenix City Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsContesting the New South Order: The 1914-1915 Strike at Atlanta's Fulton Mills Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Remembering Fishkill Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Home of Peace Memorial Park: The Unauthorized Guide Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWicked Wichita Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Hidden History of Augusta Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRock City Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMuscle Shoals Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDalton Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTennessee's Dixie Highway: Springfield to Chattanooga Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Milford Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHaunted Monterey County Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsErie Street Cemetery Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Children's Civil War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5West Point and Clay County Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWest Essex, Essex Fells, Fairfield, North Caldwell, and Roseland Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Juniata's River Valleys Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAugusta and Aiken in Golf's Golden Age Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
United States History For You
A People's History of the United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Disloyal: A Memoir: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/51776 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Great Reset: And the War for the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Great Awakening: Defeating the Globalists and Launching the Next Great Renaissance Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes: Revised and Complete Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Book of Charlie: Wisdom from the Remarkable American Life of a 109-Year-Old Man Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of the Donner Party Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer: An Edgar Award Winner Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Killing the Guys Who Killed the Guy Who Killed Lincoln: A Nutty Story About Edwin Booth and Boston Corbett Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Untold History of the United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Waco: David Koresh, the Branch Davidians, and A Legacy of Rage Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Benjamin Franklin: An American Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Killing England: The Brutal Struggle for American Independence Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Library Book Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fourth Turning Is Here: What the Seasons of History Tell Us about How and When This Crisis Will End Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Atlanta's Parks and Monuments
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Atlanta's Parks and Monuments - Rodney Mims Cook Jr.
it.
INTRODUCTION
Humans have always aspired to build great things that commemorate great people or events. This book will give you a glimpse into how the citizens of the capital of Georgia chose to build, and continue to build, grand monuments to great events and people and the beautiful parks in which to enjoy many of them. This region of the world has been populated by humans for thousands of years. Numerous glyph carvings and rock mounds (including the one below, Rock Eagle, a giant eagle over 120 feet wide located near Eatonton) situated east of Atlanta survive to this day. The Ocmulgee mound at what is now Macon, Georgia, is the largest in the state and one of its oldest monuments still in existence.
(Courtesy NMF.)
The first monumental building in Atlanta was the fort at Standing Peachtree. Lt. George Gilmer, later a governor of Georgia, completed it at the confluence of Nancy Creek and the Chattahoochee River in 1814 near a Creek Indian settlement. Such forts were created for the protection of the area’s new settlers due to British agitation of the natives during the War of 1812. The worst Indian massacre of settlers occurred at Fort Mims, near what is today’s Columbus, Georgia. British agitation also was occurring on the New York–Canadian border. Confiscation of American sailors and ships were also a cause of this war.
(Courtesy Emily Robinson Cook.)
A major facilitator in the growth of Atlanta during the mid-19th century was the railroad terminus. Zero Mile Post is a stone marker in Underground Atlanta that marks the wilderness site where the railroad was to cross before approaching the nearby mountains. A Georgia historical marker helped visitors find Zero Mile Post for over a century, as the streets of downtown were raised over the railroad, and it was dark and unusual down there until Underground Atlanta was developed in the 1960s. It is now contained within a building and is the first monument in the city of Atlanta.
The growth of Atlanta was halted when the American Civil War left the state of Georgia in ruins. Atlanta monuments would never be so humble again. Never before or since . . . has there been a period when the general level of excellence was so high in American architecture, when the ideal was so constant, and its varying expressions so harmonious, when the towns and villages, large and small, had in them so much unostentatious beauty and loveliness as during the forty years from 1820 to the Civil War,
said architecture historian Talbot Faulkner Hamlin.
The destruction of the city resulted in the disappearance of most of the monuments and buildings. The Gilded Age and the 1895 Cotton States and International Exposition, where the world’s cultural, agricultural and manufacturing products were exhibited while promoting civil liberties for women and African Americans, returned a grand tradition of beauty in monuments and architectural style that is still the Atlanta standard over a century later. The Federal era of the early 19th century gave way to the more elaborate Victorian era, and the classical standard throughout Georgia and the South adjusted to this new Gilded Age. The monuments and great buildings were reconstructed, as the city was determined that it would not be defeated. These structures have never been catalogued before.
(Courtesy Atlanta History Center.)
One
CIVIC PARKS
The Cotton States and International Exposition of 1895 followed in the tradition of the great world’s fairs in Philadelphia, London, Chicago, Paris, and other great cities. The Grand Ellipse spreads south from the Terrace; behind the Terrace today is the site of the Fuqua Conservatory of the Atlanta Botanical Garden. The domed Georgia Pavilion on the right is the scene of the famous Atlanta Compromise
speech by Booker T. Washington. The former driving track and racetrack of the Piedmont Driving Club circumvents the ellipse. Statuary abounded the tops of Corinthian columns all over the fair. (Courtesy Atlanta History Center.)
In 1895, Atlanta was a tiny town, yet its citizens have always aspired for greatness and were not going to let the burning of the city by Gen. William Sherman deter them. Approximately one million visitors attended the fair, and it was opened by the president of the United States at the time, Grover Cleveland. The impact on the city was as great as the Olympic Games held over a century later in 1996. This image shows the vibrant allegorical New South,
open for business again atop the ruins of the Civil War. (Courtesy Atlanta History Center.)