Several things came to mind as I read these last few chapters of Jackson and Hise. I was really interested in how the planners interpreted the division of land and the housing stock. I can’t believe that people would assume houses have a set lifespan and that all neighborhoods will eventually depreciate. However, this leads me to my second topic about the future orientation of society in the first half of the 20th century. I’m sure part of the reason why planners thought this way about the housing stock, is partially due to the throw-away society in America. As we have read and discussed previously in class as people colonized, they took the resources and built what they needed at that time and when they needed more resources or a larger space they would expand out to new lands. I would say that this mindset encompassing expansion into new lands and the orientation of society on new frontiers in technology are linked. Little focus seems to have been paid on maintenance of properties. Instead people dreamt of new households, new transportation, and new cities. The Popular Mechanics covers are examples of this growing absorption with the future. Above is a cover from 1933. The other picture is just another interesting example of a kit structure, this time its a kit for a hospital. What will they think of next? Why not put an entire house on wheels?

The following portion of this posting is meant to make up for the lack of one last week.
If effort counts for anything, I tried finding some of the railroad workers houses’ in Lilburn, which I thought were there still, but I couldn’t find them. Regardless of my inability to navigate Georgia, I still had some thoughts which came to mind about the readings. As I passed the large amount of “for sale” signs I began thinking about the cult of homeownership which seems to exist for many people, especially the middle class. I will admit that I have always associated homeownership with the middle class and renting usually with the working class. Perhaps the prevalence of “for sale” signs and “for rent” signs are somewhat indicators of the type of neighborhood in modern society. The issue which shocked me in the readings the most was how homeownership became so popular for the working class. The idea that this homeownership movement sparked not from native born Americans but from immigrants is fascinating. The second issue which I found interesting was the view of the impact of the automobile in the early 20th century. In particular, the comment by Allan Nevins (Jackson 173) that the automobile would help the downtown shopping business, when in fact business would later migrate away from the downtown areas in favor of closer and cheaper locations to their customers in the suburbs.

NYC slum living

When we looked at the Jacob Riis photographs in class last week I could not help but think of a book I read called Bread Givers by Anzia Yezierska. It was written in the 1920's and is about one woman's attempts to make a better life for herself by going to school, getting married, etc... The most striking thing about the book that I remembered though, was her descriptions of the living conditions. When describing her meger apartment in the city she says,
"I...began to wash the window. The minute I stuck my head out, a bunch of potato peelings fell on me. I shook off the peelings and went on with the washing. Someone began shaking a carpet. Then a shower of ashes blinded me...The deadening dirt! How could I ever do anything in this airless gloom? if i open the window the dirt will be flying in. If I keep it closed how can I breathe?"
The ongoing problems with living conditions give the entire book an air of hopelessness. Certainly housing reformers of the day helped people to a certain degree; as described here their efforts were badly needed.

Techwood Homes as an experience of public housing in the US: Part 1

" The result if not the intent of the public housing program of the United States was to segregate the races, to concentrate the disadvantaged in inner cities, and to reinforce the image of suburbia as a place of refuge for the problems of race, crime, and poverty.” (Jackson, 219)

1936-1968

In direct opposition to the quote above, Jackson states that the intent of the government intervention in providing decent affordable housing to families struggling to make payments on their variable mortgage in the economic disparity of the Great Depression. The targeted residents for public housing projects were the deserving poor or those working low-paying jobs. Most often, the housing projects were segregated by race, and the first federally funding public housing to begin construction called Techwood Homes was no exception. Techwood Homes was largely the brain child of Charles Palmer a prominent real estate developer and proprietor of numerous downtown office buildings. Palmer was determined to improve the condition of poor whites in the early twentieth slum known as the Techwood Flats as well as increase the value of a number of his land holdings in the area. With the help of Clark Howell, publisher of the Atlanta Constitution and friend of F.D.R, along with other business and civic elite within the city, Palmer developed a plan for the slum clearance utilizing federal funds made available from the 1933 housing law, creating Techwood, Inc. Before the plan could be implemented, the Housing Division of the Public works Administration abandoned the policy of lending to local corporations in favor of federal control over construction of public housing.

Another snag in the commencement of the Techwood housing project was the Housing Divisions’ findings that the proposed site included a number of black families who would be displaced by the project. The Housing Division found that before the project could start, arrangements would need to be made to house the displaced families. The outcome morphed the one proposal into two public housing facilities: Techwood Homes for whites and University Homes for blacks. According to the 1934 Real Property Inventory conducted in Atlanta, the condition of the housing stock in the “Beaver Slide” slum that became University Homes was dismal with particular mention of overcrowding, low existence of indoor plumbing and electrical power, and structures unfit for occupancy. In contrast, the University Homes produced 675 units in 44 buildings with tiled bathrooms hot and cold running water, tub, sink and toilet; modern kitchen appliances and steam heat. Additionally, three-quarters of the land was left open for paved streets, walkways, playgrounds, lawns and shrubbery beds.

Techwood Homes offered even more luxuries and amenities to their white residents. The developers constructed three-story garden apartment buildings and two-story row houses in a style identified as Neo-Georgian with durable modern and traditional building materials. All of the units were equipped with the modern conveniences noted in the University Homes plus laundry rooms with free washing machines. Car garages were also provided for each unit. Amenities on the grounds included medical and dental care facilities and small stores, large green spaces, common gardens, tennis courts and a wading pool (see images). As Alexander Von Hoffman writes in his book, House by House, Block by Block, “Public housing would never have it so good again.” Techwood Homes covered eleven blocks of previously substandard housing in the heart of the city.

Both the University and Techwood Homes implied a popular social theory espousing the importance of environmental determinism in eradicating poverty. Not only did the developers construct quality structures, but through the arrangement of the buildings, open spaces and community amenities the developers sought to construct a sense of community. A tenants association was established in Techwood to encourage resident participation in the complex, and a community newspaper, Techwood News was distributed free of charge on the first Wednesday of every month. Cul-de-sacs in Techwood were meant to provide children with a play area and undercut the previous instance of juvenile delinquency. Clark Howell Homes added 630 dwellings to the Techwood housing in 1940. In 1968, both projects became integrated following the Civil Rights Act.

Architecture reflects the historic development of a neighborhood and provides clues to the age of an individual house or group of structures. To aid in the documentation of historic areas Georgia’s the State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) comprehensively defined house types found throughout the state in the 1991 report Georgia's Living Places: Historic Houses in Their Landscaped Settings.

The house types outlined in the SHPO publication are defined by the overall form or massing of the house, and its general interior layout or arrangement. To simplify the formula: floor plan plus building height equals house type. Typology also allows for a common language of classification, to facilitate comparison and evaluation. Using these types, patterns of historical association between houses and specific historic periods becomes apparent. House typologies are continuously refined based on new information and analysis. New house types like the ranch house will be defined as more houses from the recent past are considered to be historic.

Hise’s discussion of the “The Minimal House” describes the Georgia House Type known as “The American Small House.” It is defined as a compact, four-or five-room house that is usually side-gabled but can feature front gables. They are often comprised of twentieth-century cladding like asbestos shingles or metal siding. Interior room arrangement have been described as a “constellation of rooms” around a small or non-existent central hall space. These houses are often defined through their mass-produced components, where elements like attic dormer windows or side porches could be add to a base floor plan. They were built from the 1930s to the 1950s. Blocks of these homes can be found in intown neighborhoods like Kirkwood and Mechanicsville. Here’s an example from Kirkwood (note the “stylized” English Vernacular front gable, echoing earlier/wealthier examples from Tuxedo Park).

housing in Lockheed / Dobbins area

As is posted below, the Bell Bomber plant came to Marietta in 1942 and was bought by Lockheed Martin in 1952. Belll decided to locate at this location in Marietta because of the proximity to the Marietta Army Airfield, now known as the Dobbins Airforce Base and because of the recent construction of hwy 41, the state's first four lane paved highway. The top photo above is of housing near the plant. The houses shown were built in 1949 surely to accomodate the plant's workers. The second picture is of a trailer park just down the road from the plant and the other neighborhood shown. Although the trailer park is probably a much more recent addition to the neighborhood, it was probably built to satisfy the housing needs of people who migrated to this area of Cobb County for work, much like the housing developments constructed sixty years ago.

AHA

I'm relatively unfamiliar with Atlanta neighborhoods and their histories. I'm learning a lot about these places, however, through these blogs, whereas before I honestly wouldn't have cared or have known where to look for certain areas relating to our readings and discussions. I think this has made this class more of a challenge for me because I don't have the background that some of you have in your knowledge of the city. However, this isn't necessarily a bad thing for me. I was going to research Techwood for this week's blog because I am not really up to speed on the history of the area. But, someone beat me to it, so instead of rehashing the history of Techwood, I came across this organization when I was looking up information on Techwood. I didn't know much about the Atlanta Housing Authority, even though I'm sure most of you had or even have been involved with it or are involved with it. The press clippings are interesting and relevant to our discussions on public housing and the present and probable future of public standardized housing. I really didn't know that public housing in Atlanta was being completely revitalized, and the way people think about public housing is becoming obsolete.

http://www.atlantahousingauth.org/pressroom/index.cfm?Fuseaction=printpubs

Sorry that this post is so late! I just thought these articles were worth reading...

Home Park, Industrial Neighborhood

Anybody familiar with the Georgia Tech area knows about Home Park or knows of somebody who lived there during school. Home Park is situated just south of where Atlantic Steel was located (west of the connector), which is now the site for Atlantic Station. Before driving out and taking pictures of the neighborhood I hypothesized that houses in Home Park once served as homes for workers at Atlantic Steel. I did some research of Home Park's web site and on data I could find on Atlantic Steel. My educated guess had proved correct. Atlantic Steel was founded in 1901 as Atlantic Steel Hoop Co. and became Atlantic Steel in 1915. Home Park's web site credits Atlantic Steel, among other Atlanta industries, as a major contributor to Home Park's development. Atlantic Steel was an active steel mill into the 1990's and officially closed in 1999 after being bought by a developer and eventually being transformed into Atlantic Station. Home Park has remained and continues to provide affordable housing for Georgia Tech students.




Site Plan for Atlantic Station (Home Park to the south).



Remnant for Atlantic Steel?



Houses in Home Park. All one story. Closely spaced together. Narrow street.




Again, houses very close together. You can see the back of houses in the backyard indicating small lot sizes.




New infill housing just down the street from previous pictures.




Interesting new infill. Compatible with historic character?




New housing at Atlantic Station, just across the street from Home Park.



Atlantic Station, former location of Atlantic Steel.

Hill Valley: A Nice Place to Live

I didn't get the chance to go to the "real" suburbs this week. That's just as well though, because for some reason every time I think of early post-war mass-constructed tract housing, I think of Back to the Future, both the 1955 and the 1985 versions of the oxymoronically named Northern California town in which the movie was set (Hill Valley), and the subdivision where the McFly family lived, Lyon Estates.

The image the movie casts of the suburbs is much like the one Kenneth Jackson espouses: an increasingly affordable (likely due to federal loan programs and military-industrial jobs) and desirable escape from a deteriorating urban center. While downtown Hill Valley, admittedly no metropolis, was still somewhat functional in 1985, it seems like there was a definite sense of decline. You'll recall that in the 1985-version of Hill Valley the clock tower atop city hall needed saving but no one seemed to care; further, while there may have been some shopping in and around the square, Twin Pines Shopping mall was close by.

Yet the suburban landscape in BTTF is also redolent of Greg Hise's "Suburbanization as Urbanization." There is evidence in the film that home building was transformed into an entire industry and that whole communities were planned and built not so much as core/periphery, urban/suburban dichotomies as a "coordinated metropolitan system, a network of integrated communities" (Hise, 11). Hill Valley, both the 1955 and 1985 versions, evidenced the intricate planning that went into the building of transportation networks, schools, shopping centers, churches, recreation areas, etc.

Techwood Homes

Three generations of my family were packed in the car, headed back from a Sunday dinner downtown when my grandmother asked could we drive through Techwood. As we drove through she said sadly that it certainly didn’t look like it did when her mother lived there.

I stopped mid-gumsnap in shock. Oh my god, had my grandmother hated her mother? Someone related to me had lived in TECHWOOD?!?!? My silence must have been noticed, because she then rushed to explain that Techwood had been very, very different when her mother lived there in the fifties and sixties, when my great-grandmother lived there as a widow.

Techwood opened in August 1936 and (mostly) met the wrecking ball in 1996. Because of its historic significance as the “first” public housing project in the US, some buildings were saved. These were the buildings I went to visit this weekend. Oddly enough, it was also at the end of a multi-generational family dinner and my father was with me.

As I snapped pictures I noticed another family looking in the window. They mostly looked bored, standing there holding their Varsity cups around a SUV with Gwinnett plates, but the mother was talking passionately. I moved closer and she started talking to me. She had grown up in the apartment we were looking at.

Jackson tells us Edith Elmer Wood believed that good public housing would make for better citizens, less crime, and lower overall welfare costs. The stories Mrs. Johansson told seem to illustrate this point. She told of Techwood’s manager, a Mr. Booth, who walked the paths to make sure no one walked on the grass or littered. Everyone was expected to keep their apartments neat and their guests orderly. Mr. Booth also saw to the apparently obsessive nature of the repainting of all wood trim. My father says that in his memory his grandmother’s apartment door was also wet. The set up of the apartments, complete with clotheslines, almost screams of home economists setting up the perfect minimal housing.

This idea of Techwood community is very interesting. Mrs. J remembered it as a place where everyone looked out for the other, and where kids were expected to succeed academically. My dad remembered how he loved being able to walk on sidewalks and go to the stores located on the edges of Techwood.

Jackson states that the USHA’s housing tended to be in the central city, and this caused greater segregation. Even in 1936 it is true that no one would claim Marietta Boulevard was suburban in nature. And it was definitely segregated. Techwood opened as housing for whites, and stayed that way into the mid to late sixties.


Techwood included a library/community center that is now a Suntrust branch. When Clark Howell homes was built immediately adjacent to Techwood (it also was torn down in the 1990s) another community center was built. Unlike California’s labor camp setups, the original community center was located at the edge of the community. When Clark Howell was built next door, that community center was built in the center so that both communities could use it.

Bell Bomber Plant

Reading in Hines about how the defense industry helped spur growth in southern California, reminded me of a local defense manufacturer. In the 1940's the Bell bomber plant came to Marietta bringing along good jobs and lots of people. Before the plant arrived, Marietta had around thirty thousand people. At the height of production; the plant employed over twenty-eight thousand people and almost doubled the population of Marietta Housing quickly developed around the plant.

The Bell Bomber plant is now Lockheed Martin. It still employs a larger number of people in Cobb Country and the city of Marietta has continued to grow and it as part of the Atlanta metro area.


Photo on the right is the undeveloped site of where the plant would be built.
Photo on the left is the plant under construction.

photos from Atlanta History Center

Uncle Sam's Benevolence

I was struck by the illustration on p. 41 in Hise showing a 1938 advertisement promoting the FHA. The ad touts a home as "life's most cherished possession," asserting that ownership will bring "respect, happiness and security." All of these wonders are courtesy of the "kindly benevolence" of Uncle Sam. Personally, I find this Uncle Sam to look far more creepy than kindly, and I suppose that is appropriate, given that the American Dream he's peddling is a bit tarnished and certainly selective. Decades earlier, developers sought to lure new homeowners out of the city to a more beautiful, healthy environment--as long as they were "decent" and "moral," or at least not Jewish, black, or Irish. The FHA gave government approval to such practices, reinforcing segregation and racism through its concern over "inharmonious racial or nationality groups." 

An Early Sears House

I’m a week behind with my posts due to a death in the family. I’m hoping to post something for this week’s reading this weekend. With that said, here are the pictures of the possible Sears house I spoke about very briefly in class last week. From 1908-1940, Sears sold approximately 70,000 to 75,000 homes through their mail order program. These pictures are of my cousin’s house in Weatherford, Texas. Though we have not had the time to research and find the markers of a Sears House on the house, the oral tradition of the “white house” is that it is a very early Sears House. It was built in 1908 and its original owner was a hardware store owner who probably ordered this “new innovation” before it was popular. The historic town of Weatherford is located less than 30 minutes west of Fort Worth. The railroad came into the city in 1880 and probably had the commuter trains that Jackson describes in Crabgrass Frontier. Even today the city’s websites claims that “Residents find themselves able to achieve a rural lifestyle without sacrificing the conveniences and labor market of a major metropolitan area.”
In Crabgrass Frontier, Jackson discusses the transformation of home building from a specialized craft to an industry with individuals constructing their own homes from patterns or kits. The balloon frame and machine nail contributed to this transformation. “Individual families and small contractors then built houses modeled upon a common design. Entrepreneurs developed kits that could be delivered to any railroad depot in the nation; no longer was it necessary for the home builder to be able even to cut his studs to the right size; that was done for him.” (Jackson, 127) This enabled both middle class and blue collar workers to own a home in the suburbs. This house in Weatherford is an example of the middle class moving into the suburbs due to their use of these new construction innovations.

City of Weatherford- http://www.ci.weatherford.tx.us/
Sears House Information- http://www.searsarchives.com/homes/

Allen Wilson Terrace

The Allen Wilson Terrace Public Housing Project occupies an important location at the corner of West Trinity and Commerce Streets in rapidly redeveloping downtown Decatur. The project was constructed in 1941, in what was Decatur's Beacon Community, the center of Decatur's African American community. This community was decimated by Urban Renewal projects in the the 1960s and the only buildings which remain from the early years of the Beacon Community include the Allen Wilson Terrace, two churches and a school building. (from City of Decatur signage) The project was named for the first African-American school principal in Decatur.

The Allen Wilson Terrace was built in the city center rather than in the suburbs as Jackson states is a typical feature of legislation concerning public housing. As the development was built in a traditional African-American community, it would primarily house African-Americans reinforcing racial segregation. This housing project is more successful architecturally and in plan as it is not a highrise, superblock building. Although constructed before the publication of Oscar Newman's Defensible Space, the Allen Wilson buildings have many entrances, are low-rise, and contain a great deal of space for community congregation. (pg 228)

In September 2007, a plan was approved by the Decatur City Commissioners for the redevelopment of the Allen Wilson Terrace. All 22 buildings (200 units) constructed in 1941 will be demolished to make way for five multi-story buildings and 13 cluster homes. 189 public housing dwellings will be contained in the multi-story buildings along with 18 market rate units.
(indecatur.org)
HADP Architecture has a link showing the plan and elevations for the new Allen Wilson Terrace. I wish I could post the photos but it appears on their website as a slideshow. Here is the link if you are interested - http://www.hadparchitecture.com/detail.cfm?ID=37

Garden Hills- The Complete Package

According to the Garden Hills Neighborhood Website,

“Garden Hills is a large urban forest neighborhood between Peachtree and Piedmont roads, bordered on the north by Pharr Road and on the south by East Wesley Road. For intown living, Garden Hills has it all: winding streets lined with old trees, an imposing mix of early 20th century homes, pocket parks, landscaped traffic islands and a neighborhood pool/recreation center – all convenient to shopping, transportation, schools and churches. The oldest streets were given historic district status in 1987.”
(http://www.buckhead.net/gardenhills/)

Garden Hills was developed in 1925 by Phillips Campbell McDuffie, a lawyer and prominent Atlantan socialite. McDuffie formed the Garden Hills Corporation and the Garden Hills Mortgage Company. He was not only the brain behind Garden Hills, he was also the money. Garden Hills was as much a vision of suburban living as it was an investment. With Garden Hills, Phillips Campbell McDuffie’s vision “lives on in the sometimes spirited debates in the recreation center, the shaded homes along the winding roads, and the children's laughter at the swimming pool that once was ‘Crystal Lake.’”

McDuffie envisioned a country club community with a pool and community center at the heart of the neighborhood. Garden Hills also enjoys three neighborhood parks: Sunnybrook, Alexander, and Frankie Allen. Sunnybrook is a manicured landscape with flower gardens, foliage, green space, and benches. Alexander Park is a primitive area with a natural, snaking creek and ancient trees. The only noticeable traces of man come in the forms of a stone bridge and a few scattered benches. Frankie Allen Park is a sports complex, with baseball diamonds, tennis courts, and picnic areas. All three areas combined create the whole park, with all its modern uses, but since the three are separated and dispersed throughout Garden Hills, more homes can enjoy a close proximity to open green space.

Garden Hills was obviously the single vision of McDuffie, but this is only apparent through research. While walking through the neighborhood, it feels as if the styles of homes are eclectic, bordering on disjointed. Home styles in Garden Hills include American Colonial, Tudor, English Cottage, Georgian, and many more. In addition to the freedom with which McDuffie allowed architects to build homes, there is the added mishmash of new homes built to in an attempt to resemble their 1920’s counterparts.

To create more of a self-contained village, McDuffie planned for two schools, a small commercial district, and some multifamily housing. The International School (formerly North Fulton High School) and the Garden Hills Elementary school, a thriving business district along Peachtree Road, and a community center with a clubhouse and a pool complete the vision of a complete package of a suburban community.

St. Elmo

I took a weekend trip to Nashville this past weekend and on my drive back stopped in St. Elmo, one of my favorite early suburbs, located just south of Chattanooga. St. Elmo is the oldest suburb in Chattanooga, developed in 1893 by Civil War Colonel A.M. Johnson. The first plat of the suburb dates to 1885 when wealthy residents of Chattanooga began to flee the City following the outbreak of a yellow fever epidemic. Those residents with great wealth moved on top of Lookout Mountain where the altitude was too high for mosquitos but those with more moderate wealth began to settle at the base of the mountain in the area which would become St. Elmo.


The development of St. Elmo as a true suburb community began in 1893 as a result of two transportation improvements. An electric trolley from Chattanooga arrived in St. Elmo in 1893 and an incline railway from St. Elmo to the top of Lookout Mountain was added in 1895. The trolley allowed for the upper and middle class to escape the City and quickly commute to the City. The incline railway allowed the upper class with homes atop Lookout Mountain to reach the top of the mountain much faster. The community became self sufficient with the addition of several churches, a school and cemetery.



The development of St. Elmo follows the Jackson model of suburb development. The development of St. Elmo was successful because of the electric trolley. I don't know that I can say it necessarily opened the suburb for the blue collar worker but much more for a common man than previous borderland examples. The homes present in St. Elmo possess vernacular details and are very much understated in style and detail when compared to suburban housing of the same period in Atlanta and Nashville. St. Elmo also gave Chattanooga residents a place to explore as Jackson discusses on page 112. The proximity of the neighborhood to Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Battlefield Parks (dedicated in 1890) and the ability of tourists to take the incline railway to Lookout Mountain spurred interest in the area.

Peachtree Park and The Color of Money

I have found Jackson’s chapter dealing with the impact of federal housing policies on how and where Americans lived to be historiographically significant in developing a framework for understanding postwar American suburbanization. It was not until the Home Owners Loan Corporation, which divided neighborhoods for “redlining,” and the Federal Housing Administration, which cemented the Suburban Dream, were created that the relationship between city and suburbia become recognizable in today’s form. (See pages 197-8, 206). For southern cities, like Atlanta, federal policies furthered residential segregation that had been underway since the turn of the century. According to Georgia Tech professor Larry Keating’s research and a series of articles titled “The Color of Money,” which appeared in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in May 1998 and won a 1989 Pulitzer Prize, FHA-insured mortgages shaped the discriminatory real estate market and the segregated housing patterns of Atlanta’s post-World War II suburbs. (See Larry Keating’s Race, Class, and Urban Expansion pages 55-59).

Considered to be the third phase of construction extending from the working class Buckhead neighborhood of Peachtree Highlands, which I discussed in my previous posting, Peachtree Park is located between Peachtree Road and Piedmont Road and consists of thirteen streets. The ring of houses built linking the two neighborhoods (from East Paces Ferry Road to Greenview Avenue and part of Dale Drive) was built in the 1930s and 1940s. The southern third of Peachtree Park, which I am focusing on, was constructed after World War II. Running from Dale Drive to Darlington Circle, the ranch-style houses create an architectural break from the surrounding area. In 2006, Peachtree Park residents completed the data to apply for and add this southern half of Peachtree Park to the National Historic Register, thus protecting the entire neighborhood from future commercial development and strengthening the property values and financial investments of homeowners. (See www.peachtreepark.org).

Called an “island within the city,” I wanted to return to this postwar section of Buckhead because of its mention in “The Color of Money.” On 1 May 1988 the series explored the experience of Micheal Lomax, a leader in Atlanta’s black community and a 1989 candidate for mayor. The Fulton County Commission chairman wanted to get a loan to add a guesthouse on the back of his property in Adams Park, an upper-middle-class black neighborhood in southwest Atlanta. Beginning in the 1940s, until the passage of the Fair Housing Act in the 1990s, African-Americans in Atlanta found it extremely difficult to secure loans. Mr. Lomax, who was also at the time an associate professor of literature at Spelman College, elaborate on the historical impact of federal housing policies, “My home to date does not appraise for the amount I’ve invested in it. I find that extremely frustrating and somehow just plain wrong. I’m not doing anything different from what people do in Morningside or Peachtree Park. You drive through Peachtree Hills and you’ll see the exact same houses as in Adams Park, but they’re appraised at a third more because white people live in them.” (See http://powerreporting.com/color/1b.html).

I left my condo in Midtown and proceeded up Piedmont. After making a right and looping through Peachtree Highlands and Peachtree Park along Darlington, Dale, Park Circle, and Martina, I found myself back under the shadows of Lenox Mall and the new Terminus building. I was struck by how the historic neighborhood, stretching from 1920s bungalows to 1940s ranch-style houses had managed to isolate itself. The narrow streets, without cut-through outlets to Peachtree used 4-way stops, historic markers, and neighborhood street signs to form boundaries and create a neighborhood identity removed from the development of Buckhead. Unfortunately I only realized after the fact that my camera phone does not allow me to email photographs. These photographs come from the neighborhood’s website.