English Avenue: Working Class Suburb?

The existence of unplanned working class suburban communities that came into being before World War I can be hard to prove. These are not the sort of communities that tend to inspire preservation efforts. There also is not a lot of easily attainable photographic images from the period. When discussing these sorts of communities in Atlanta, most attention has been paid to the east side of Atlanta. However, the west side of Atlanta has a rich history of lower income housing that ranged from slums to unplanned working class suburbs to beautifully planned suburbs to (eventually) America’s first housing project.

The Marietta Street/Bankhead highway corridors that dominate the Westside first came into being in 1869. Means Street and the surrounding Bellwood area (later named Bankhead Highway and now called Donald Hallowell) was planned to include industry and housing for workers, all possible due to the Western and Atlantic Railroad tracks that ran through the area. This is a picture of the railroad station on Bankhead and English Avenues from the 19th century. Amazingly, it is still standing even though it has been boarded up for the last fifty years.

Well-serviced by streetcars from the 1880s until they stopped running in 1963, it was a fairly easy commute from the English Avenue area to other parts of Atlanta. However, there was plenty of work in the industrial section of the Westside. Kings’ Plow Manufacturers, Exhibition Cotton Mills, Standard Oil Company, Block Candy Company, printing companies, and warehouses were located in the area which also has a long history of sheet metal companies (Atlantic Sheet Metal has been in the same location for at least 80 years) and scrap yards.

It might be considered slightly gauche to mix academic writing with family genealogy, but time constraints make it the easiest way to provide information about the area. My great-grandfather John W. came to the English Avenue area in the 1890s to work at the Exhibition Cotton Mills. Although Exhibition offered mill owned housing, John lived from the 1890s to the 1940s in a succession of rental homes around English Avenue. Census data from 1900, 1910, 1920, and 1930 consistently shows that his neighborhood was filled with Exhibition cotton mill workers (spinners, machinists, weavers) who chose not to live in mill housing, workers from city utilities, pressmen from the printing company, railroad workers (switchmen, pilots, engineers), carpenters, and small store owners. Most of the housing stock was rental, unlike some of the examples from the Harris articles. Unlike other areas of the Westside, none of the head of house occupations were laborers. However, many households included boarders and these boarders were often very young, unskilled male laborers.



In class we debated what constituted suburban housing in cities like Atlanta that do not fall into easily defined categories based on Northeastern models. One idea was that gardens and an area to have chickens was one working definition. Oral histories (again, of people related or known to me) place chickens in the neighborhood until well after WWII. I also think that if you view going “downtown” as something separate from your life might be another way to define intown suburbia. People living around English Avenue were able to do their everyday shopping around Bankhead Highway and Marietta Street and take streetcars “intown” for special shopping, following a classic suburban model. Living around English Avenue removed mill workers from living under their bosses’ constant surveillance and provided other workers with affordable single family housing on private lots either near work or easily accessible to the streetcar system.

Much of the classic housing stock of this area is gone. Georgia Tech has consumed the entire Means street area and 1000s (according to some estimates) of other single family homes. Other houses were demolished to make way for various apartment buildings and housing projects. Rapid expansion of the commercial district in the 1950s destroyed more. Exhibition Mills and the surrounding mill housing is gone. However, several examples of early working class housing still remain around the area. Here are some examples of shotgun houses on long, deep lots. Here are some further examples of housing in the area.

English Avenue School was open by 1915 (I have been unable to locate an exact date) . It served local children through the seventh grade. This picture is of the 1929 class. Notice how the boys are seemingly dressed in a uniform. This is a picture of where these children were standing 78 years later. The school was extremely important to the community, educating generations of blue collar families. "White Flight" mentions the school's painful desegregation and white abandonment of the community immeadiately following.

(I apologize for the quality of the picture; I had to take them from inside a car.)

Peachtree Highlands

Peachtree Highlands, now a National Historic District, was developed from 1913 to 1915 by the McKenzie Trust Company. Unlike other nearby developments (Ansley Park, Brookhaven, Tuxedo Park and Brookwood Hills) Peachtree Highlands was designed to appeal to less affluent, working-class families. Some of the earliest residents included an Atlanta & West Point Railroad clerk, an Atlanta Trust Company clerk, automobile mechanic, postal clerk, shoemaker, plumber, and metal worker.

This 1913 map shows how the developer laid out lots along the extended Peachtree Road trolley line. The curvilinear street plan remains the same today, as do many of the original houses, which often came out of pattern books (See Crabgrass Frontier pages 127-128 for a description of how pattern books changed construction costs in working class suburbs). Therefore, Peachtree Higlands fits Kenneth Jackson’s case studies. Not only did the electric streetcar open up suburbs to the working class, there is a close connection between land speculation and the construction and location of streetcar tracks (Crabgrass Frontier p. 118-120).

These two 1937 photographs show some of the original houses in Peachtree Highlands. However, unlike Harris’s unregulated working-class suburbs, the McKenzie Trust Co. put certain restrictions on sale of the homes: no African-Americans, no liquor to be sold on the property, layout of lots must be maintained, and the developer reserves the right to lay electric streetcar lines and sewer, gas and water pipes. Sorry for the late posting!!!

Avondale Estates

Avondale Estates is located approximately seven miles east of downtown Atlanta, and occupies lands that until the early 1920s consisted of a small community known as Ingleside and several large farms. Around the turn-of-the-century, Ingleside, founded in 1893 by J. H. Dabney, was considered to be a picturesque retreat and one of Atlanta’s most attractive suburban residential areas. In 1895 the Atlanta Journal characterized the community as the “liveliest village of the Piedmont heights” and a “little town of lively residences with all the comforts
and conveniences which create an ideal home, away from the busy marts of trade.” Ingleside also had the advantage of being located on 3major transportation routes: the Atlanta Street Railway/Stone Mountain Trolley Line, Georgia Railroad and Atlanta-to-Augusta highway. In January of 1924, Atlanta businessman George F. Willis purchased 1,000 acres in DeKalb County, including nearly all of what was then Ingleside as well as a 400-acre dairy farm owned by Judge John S. Candler. Willis’ intention was to develop the property into a model
suburb with extensive residential, commercial and recreational components. Soon after acquiring the property, Willis set out on a tour of successful suburbs in the Eastern and Midwestern United States in order to begin developing ideas for the site he termed “the most attractive community site in the southern states.” Assisting Willis in creating Avondale Estates were two prominent professionals, Atlanta engineer O.F. Kauffman and Philadelphia landscape architect Robert Cridland. By January of 1926 considerable progress had been made, including construction of the community’s streets as well as the commercial buildings, approximately fifty houses,
and a park with pool, poolhouse, tennis courts and playground equipment. Many of the earliest houses were prominent two-story dwellings located in the northern section of the residential area; most of the later homes were smaller and only one or one-and-a-half stories in height. Before the Depression slowed development of Avondale Estates, another seventy-five residences were completed. During the 1930s, housing construction in Avondale Estates was slow; and when World War II began, development stopped. Avondale Estates is

significant as an example in the southeastern United States as an early twentieth century planned community due to its early planning effort and for its architectural and landscape components. Accordingly, the Avondale Estates Historic District received national recognition by its listing in the National Register of Historic Places (December 1986).The picture above depicts the landscaping and architectural stylings of many of the homes in historic Avondale. (And what is up with this horrible formatting?! I swear it doesn't look like it's going to appear from this view.)

Information courtesy of avondaleestates.org

Below is a picture of the tree-lined streets that provide excellent "frosting" in the summer.

These large shrubs serve as a barrier between the Avondale above and the Avondale below. (See below)

These are pictures of the "other" Avondale. Most of the homes are much smaller and for sale. Many new, larger homes are being built on this side of the street next to these smaller, dilapidated homes. These homes are also within close proximity to the factories and other industries that have since closed and most likely inhabited by the people that once worked in the factories.

I mentioned the styles of residents in the Druid Hills District falling in line with the Downing and Jackson recommendation of either Gothic revival or...

Italianne Renaissance revival to compliment the picturesque setting.

And I found this skyline shot of Chicago from Englewood. Just to get a comparison to Atlanta's Englewood Ave.

Reading Kenneth Jackson’s approach to early suburban development in the major cites of the north made me think of the Atlanta’s growth after the Civil War. Though temporarily stunted by reconstruction many of Atlanta’s suburbs formed along major transportation lines. The Atlanta History Center is a repository of numerous historic images of Atlanta including the one above….
Atlanta 1872, in intersection of Alabama and Pryor Streets. The mulecar in the foreground is traveling east on the McDonough St. (Capitol Ave) line.

Democratizing the Suburbs

The discussions in Stilgoe and the first reading in Jackson focus on the early suburb as an environment dominated by upper and middle class residents who often resorted to restrictive regulations to keep their communities homogenous not only in aesthetics but also in socio-economic configuration. The readings for this week explore how the “common man” made the suburb his home by being thrifty and resourceful . They slowly build upon shacks and shanties to erect more substantial but still owner-built houses. As the Harris articles show, the elite may not have needed to go to such great lengths to keep out blue-collar workers because of the necessity to live within walking distance to their workplace, which largely before 1900 meant residence in a high-density area in the center of the city. While Jackson continues to note the importance of new breakthroughs in transportation services for sustained suburban expansion, Harris points to the decentralization of industry and the benefit of unregulated homeownership in the unincorporated fringe areas of urban areas as the two main catalysts for blue-collar migration from the CBD where they manifested their own interpretation of suburban living.

Although even in this seemingly democratic opening of the suburbs to the lower classes, suburbs remained homogenous milieus and continued the pattern of separation along socio-economic lines. Is this a consequence of functioning in a capitalist economy and a culture that emphasizes private property ownership? At their basic level suburbs are real estate ventures that proved lucrative for many wealthy investors if they were built in the right place, for the right people and with the proper amount of municipal support. Jackson comments on the underlying unscrupulousness of successful turn of the century real estate developers F.M. “Borax” Smith, Henry Huntington and Francis Newlands: “ All pretended to be operating as independent entrepreneurs in the best traditions of a democratic society. All in fact manipulated government agencies and employed political favoritism in order to use public streets and to gain public franchises for their private ends.” (pg. 124)

I recently moved into a house that sits a few blocks west of the Grant Park Historic District boundary in a place that is determined by the street signs to be Peoplestown. On the way home one day, I missed my street and had to turn around…lucky for me. I turned around at Englewood Ave. and Hill St. where nice, modest homes were built (recently) on top of a hill overlooking a truck yard and with a view of the Atlanta skyline beyond.

The Englewood I previously knew of is a recognize community in southwest Chicago, incorporated by the city in 1889. My first introduction to the neighborhood was through Devil in the White City. This is the area where the murder in the story lived. In the book, Englewood develops explosively with the activity leading up to the Columbian Exposition in 1893, predominately due to the construction of a streetcar line directly to the fair grounds. Previous to the fair, however the area was also serviced by a line to the CBD. Then and now the demographics create a picture of a poor, predominately minority community.

The homes along Englewood Avenue look to be very recent construction with vinyl siding and modern windows. The area is near a MARTA bus stop, but more than likely, most residents use a car as their main method of transportation. Even more than 100 years apart the two neighborhoods tell a similar story about the components that influenced their development. They both speak to the continuing trend of the population to move away from the high density living spaces in the center of the city in favor of single family dwellings, as a realization of the American idealization of property ownership and a sense of privacy in the home.

Truck yard across the street from houses on Englewood.

Atlanta Skyline from sidewalk in front of houses.

Mozley Park

This week I visited Mozley Park, which is just a few miles west of downtown. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, this erstwhile whites-only neighborhood grew up in the early post-WWI era, with more and more houses being added over the next twenty years. According to the NPS website, the first Mozley Park houses were "Folk Victorian cottages and Craftsman bungalows built on small lots with varied setbacks and no driveways. There have been modest changes to the houses, including new awnings, siding, and rear additions. The overall neighborhood plan is that of a gridiron, typical of many Atlanta neighborhoods. Many of the streets have retained their original granite curbing and narrow sidewalks with hexagonal pavers. Lots are primarily 50 feet wide."

In the words of historian Kevin Kruse, "Mozley Park stood as a small community of working-class and lower-middle-class white families, living in single story homes along narrow streets" (See Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism, [Princeton, 2005], 58). Characterized by speculative building, regulation and city services, not to mention segregated spaces like schools, a park and a cemetery, this neighborhood conforms much more to Jackson's understanding of "Affordable Homes for the Common Man," than to Harris' owner-built, deregulated and decentralized blue-collar suburbs.

These are some photos of Westview Cemetery, which borders Mozley Park to the southwest. Established in the 1880s, the cemetery is noted for its "nearly six hundred acres of richly landscaped lawns and strict requirement that all who came there--both visitors and permanent residents--be white" (Kruse, 58). It also features an imposing entrance gate, rolling hills and ubiquitous tribute to the Confederate Soldier (most of whom I noticed died in the WWI era...).

Canton Cotton Mills

The Canton Cotton Mills opened in 1899, initially operating out of the No. 1 Mill, located in a bend of the Etowah River adjacent to the Marietta and North Georgia Railroad. Workers lived nearby, in small double houses built in the early 1900s. This first phase of the mill village was located on the side of a hill, just above the mill and just below the downtown

commercial area. Some larger houses were constructed for upper-level workers, closer to downtown and further from the rail line.

The mill village, with its narrow, twisting streets and tightly-packed houses, some mere steps from the train tracks, contrasts sharply with the large brick homes on Main Street, set well back and surrounded by trees. 

Riverdale Church was built in 1907 for the workers, and still serves a dwindling and aging congregation. 

The No. 2 Mill was added later on the other side of the river, and was in operation until 1981. A new phase of the mill town was built, with larger double houses and some dormitory-style buildings. Currently, the No. 2 Mill contains loft apartments. 

The company offices moved into a building at the edge of downtown in the 1920s, which now houses the county board of education. The workers shopped at the Jones Mercantile Store on Main Street, which was also in business until the mid-eighties.

The Jones family, owners of the mill, and many other prominent Canton families originally lived downtown. When the street pattern was changed in the early 20th century and the mill began to expand, many of these families moved further up Main Street, to the outer edge of town. Miss Pearl Jones, then owner of the mill, exemplified this separation, moving to 100 wooded acres on Breeze Hill, using mill hands to create a painstakingly landscaped haven.

Clarkdale Mill Village

Southern mill towns were an important part of Southern culture in the early part of the 20th century. Most were ramshackle affairs built quickly and cheaply with none of the concern for town planning evident in mid-western company towns like Pullman. An exception to this is the Clarkdale mill community in Austell, Georgia. Built in the early 1930s by the Clark Thread Company it is believed to be the last planned mill town in the Southeast. The town was designed by the J.E. Sirrine architectural firm of South Carolina.
Sirrine developed six distinctive house plans for Clarkdale. The overseers houses (called Overseer’s house in the plans) were located along Newark Avenue, perhaps in an attempt to make management feel more at home. The overseers’ area features curvilinear streets and asymmetric houses with curved front doors, in an attempt to make it look like any middle-class suburban area. The houses had two bedrooms, one bath, an eat-in kitchen, formal living and dining rooms and an attached garage. Note how the overseers‘ houses are identical and placed next to each other.
The rest of Clarkdale was not segregated by occupation. Houses of different sizes and styles were built next to each other, all on curvilinear streets. This drawing of an aerial view of the development gives some idea of the layout.
Of the other five house types two styles were duplexes for two families, either a double two room house or a double three room house. The double houses contained kitchens and bedrooms but no sitting area. All of the other house plans contained separate living rooms. Most of the doubles have now been converted to single family homes but the outside of this house still looks original.
It was not only the housing that Clark Thread planned. They donated a building to be used as a post office, and even now Clarkdale houses do not have mailboxes but still all have post office boxes, even though the original post office building is now gone. Clark also built churches, and a community center that still stands. Although the community center is currently closed (no one quite knows who owns or is responsible for it) residents still recall the dances, meetings, and fish fries held on the premises. Clark built a lake and stocked it with trout; the lake was dredged in the late 1990s.
The mill closed in the early 1980s. During the 1990s the mill was transformed into Thread Mill Mall and was supposed to be an important outlet mall. That concept was a resounding failure, and now the building is mostly occupied by City of Austell offices, the police academy, a branch of the Cobb County library, and a bank branch.
My inner-Marxists recoils a little at this picture. The idea of being dependent on an employer for not only a paycheck, but for housing and community is not a comforting one. However, when Clarkdale opened one of my great-grandfather's in Atlanta was dependent on the WPA to feed his family and the chance to live in a new house that came with indoor plumbing and electricity would have been a dream come true.