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    Historic Grant Park
    Historic Grant Park
    Historic Grant Park
    Ebook185 pages1 hour

    Historic Grant Park

    By Jennifer Goad Cuthbertson and Philip M. Cuthbertson

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    Both the neighborhood of Grant Park and the 131-acre park take their shared name from railroad executive Lemuel P. Grant. The park was a gift to the City of Atlanta from Grant and was designed by John Charles Olmsted, the stepson of Frederick Law Olmsted. It became an urban haven where people came to "take the waters" from its natural springs, canoe on Lake Abana, and stroll the winding pathways in the pastoral park. A neighborhood sprang up around this oasis and was filled with homes that were designed in the spirit of Victorian painted ladies, Craftsman bungalows, Queen Anne, and New South cottages. In 1979, the structures within the neighborhood and park were placed on the National Register of Historic Places.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateSep 18, 2012
    ISBN9781439626740
    Historic Grant Park
    Author

    Jennifer Goad Cuthbertson

    Images and relics of this idyllic area have been preserved by organizations such as the Atlanta Preservation Center, the Atlanta History Center, the State of Georgia, and Georgia State University. These collections, along with those of past and present neighborhood residents and local churches, are showcased in Images of America: Historic Grant Park. Since the early 1990s, authors Jennifer Goad Cuthbertson and Philip M. Cuthbertson have made this neighborhood their home and have worked with a variety of organizations to preserve the integrity of it as well as the park.

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      Book preview

      Historic Grant Park - Jennifer Goad Cuthbertson

      you.

      INTRODUCTION

      Unto each man his handiwork, unto each his crown the just fate gives

      Whoso takes the world’s life on him and his own lays down, He, dying so, lives.

      —From the poem by Charles Algernon Swinburne,

      read at the 1910 unveiling of a monument for Col. Lemuel P. Grant,

      the man behind the park and the neighborhood

      Atlanta is a town whose fortunes were founded on the railroad. It was a hub for rail activity in the Southeast during the 1800s, and Lemuel Pratt Grant was one of the men at the forefront of the railroad industry. Born in August 1817, Grant was a product of Frankfurt, Maine. He was a self-taught civil engineer, and his ambition went well beyond the boundaries of his family farm. By becoming a rodman for the engineering corps of the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad, he wrote his ticket off the farm and into a prominent role as railroad scion, military man, and philanthropist in Atlanta, Georgia.

      In January 1840, Grant accepted an offer as assistant engineer in the engineer corps of the Georgia Railroad and moved to Atlanta, then known as Marthasville. Grant worked his way up the ranks through various railroad companies. Along the way, he accumulated a vast wealth, and in 1846, a portion of his income was used to purchase 600-plus acres of land, some for 75¢ an acre and the rest for $2 an acre.

      Lemuel P. Grant became a colonel in the Confederate army in 1862 and, as the chief engineer for the Department of Militia, he was commissioned to repair and reconstruct Georgia railways damaged by federal troops. He was also charged with designing defensive fortifications for the city of Atlanta.

      Besides being a railroad man, a member of the military, and a philanthropist, Col. Lemuel P. Grant was also a great reader, preferring the works of Charles Dickens, and he is reported to have owned both the first piano and the first carriage brought to Atlanta. The colonel built an antebellum, brick-and-stucco mansion for his family and loved to walk through the woods on his property and enjoy the natural springs and abundant bird life. He opted to share this bounty with the citizens of Atlanta.

      In 1883, he donated 100 acres of land to the city to create a public park. The deed for the city’s oldest park proclaims the following: To have and to hold said tract of land, as part and parcel of the L.P. Grant Park to the use of said City of Atlanta forever, on condition that the same shall be maintained by said City as a public park, and shall not be used for any purpose inconsistent with its use as a public park, and that spirituous liquors shall not be sold thereon.

      Sydney Root, a close friend of Grant, was appointed the first park commissioner of the city and charged with supervising the construction of the park. The city initially spent $3,500 on materials and labor to turn Colonel Grant’s gift into a park. In the mid-1880s, discussions began with the Frederick Law Olmsted design firm, designer of New York’s Central Park, to develop the new park. However, the firm was not formally under contract until 1903, and by that time Frederick had died, so John Charles Olmsted, Frederick’s stepson, took on the commission and worked to make Colonel Grant’s vision for a serene, pastoral space a reality.

      The original design of the park featured many winding, shaded pathways named after Georgia’s major cities and incorporated the natural springs that Colonel Grant so loved.

      In 1885, then Atlanta mayor George Hillyer said, A place of recreation like this is of inestimable value to our hard-working citizens and industrious population. Nothing promotes more, both the moral and mental, as well as physical health, than such a place of resort and recreation.

      The 430 acres of the Grant Park residential neighborhood got its start in the 1880s when Colonel Grant began subdividing and selling his land, as did property owners living in close proximity to the new park. Deeds indicate that the street pattern was in place by 1883. By the time of Grant’s death in 1893, many of the lots were already sold.

      Efforts were also undertaken to connect the newly developed neighborhood with the city of Atlanta. In 1883, the Metropolitan Street Railway Company established a streetcar service with four separate lines traveling to the area, and for the cost of 10¢ a ride, anyone could travel to the people’s playground, as Grant Park came to be known. In May 1887, the city began work on a series of boulevards connecting Grant Park to Peachtree Street, Georgia and Capitol Avenues, Washington and Pryor Streets, and West End.

      Grant Park also became home to other amenities that still bring pleasure to tourists and city residents alike. In 1889, as the park and neighborhood were taking shape, George Gress purchased a defunct traveling circus at an auction on the steps of the Fulton County Courthouse. His ultimate goal was to acquire the wagons and railroad cars that were part of the circus, and Gress offered the animals to the city of Atlanta.

      A collection of one hyena, two African lionesses, two silver lions, one black bear, two wildcats, one jaguar, one gazelle, one raccoon, one elk, one Mexican hog, two deer, one camel, one dromedary, two monkeys, and two serpents made up the first zoo in the city. Gress erected housing and cages for the animals in Grant Park. The Grant Park Zoo opened in April 1889. Gress is also responsible for bringing the Atlanta Cyclorama, an 18,000-pound, 50-foot-high painting of the Atlanta campaign of 1864, to Grant Park.

      The Grant Park neighborhood reached its zenith in the early 1900s and prospered until its war with the automobile began. The first battle in the early 1900s siphoned off wealthier residents who could now afford cars and were drawn to neighborhoods that were farther away from the city. They began to move to the wealthier suburbs of Druid Hills, Morningside, and Buckhead. Despite this, Grant Park remained an upper-middle-class neighborhood into the 1950s.

      The 1960s marked the second battle with the automobile and was the period when the

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