Atlanta is the capital and largest city of Georgia. It serves as a center of trade and transportation for the southeastern United States. The city is the historic core of a metropolitan area of 6 million people. It lies in northern Georgia, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
In 1837, a town called Terminus emerged at a railroad intersection. In 1845, it was renamed Atlanta and soon developed into a busy trade and transportation center. During the American Civil War (1861-1865), Atlanta was destroyed by Union troops led by General William T. Sherman.
In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, Atlanta leaders promoted its transportation advantages at the center of the Southeastern rail network. Today, with excellent rail, air, and interstate highway links, it is the center of one of the fastest-growing metropolitan areas in the United States.
The city
Layout of Atlanta.
The Chattahoochee, one of Georgia’s major rivers, forms part of Atlanta’s western border. Most of Atlanta lies in Fulton County, but its easternmost section extends into DeKalb County.
Downtown Atlanta, in the east-central part of the city, has excellent transportation connections. At its center, the Five Points MARTA (Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority) Station connects two major lines of a commuter rail system. To its south is an interstate highway junction, where I-75/85 connects with I-20.
The Downtown area begins on Atlanta’s south side with a complex of city, county, state, and federal government buildings. The State Capitol dates from 1889 and stands in a group of mid-rise buildings that date from the early 1900’s. These buildings largely are dwarfed by 30- to 50-story skyscrapers built in the late 1900’s.
East of the Five Points Station lies Underground Atlanta, a 22-acre (9-hectare) shopping and entertainment complex. To the west are major sports and convention complexes. To the northeast is Auburn Avenue, one of two famous streets in the city. From the late 1800’s to the early 1960’s, when the city was legally segregated, this street served as the heart of the Black business community. It is now the location of the Martin Luther King, Jr., National Historical Park. It includes King’s birthplace; the Ebenezer Baptist Church, where King preached; and the King Center, which houses his tomb.
Atlanta’s other famous street, Peachtree, runs north from Downtown, through the Midtown area, to the Buckhead area. It is the site of Peachtree Center, a modern business complex that includes hotels, office buildings, restaurants, and shops. In Midtown, a commercial and residential area north of Downtown, the street is home to Atlanta’s tallest building, the 1,023-foot (312-meter) Bank of America Plaza, and the Fox Theatre, a grand movie house that dates from 1929. In Buckhead, the street joins Lenox Square and Phipps Plaza, the premier shopping centers of the region.
High-rise residential buildings on Peachtree Street overlook historic neighborhoods. Middle-class bungalow neighborhoods circle Downtown. These neighborhoods include Virginia Highland to the east and the historic Black community of Washington Park to the west.
The metropolitan area.
Atlanta’s metropolitan area spreads out over 29 counties. It is home of about half of Georgia’s people.
Most of the metropolitan area population is concentrated in the urban areas of 10 counties organized under the Atlanta Regional Commission—Cherokee, Clayton, Cobb, DeKalb, Douglas, Fayette, Fulton, Gwinnett, Henry, and Rockdale. The majority of this population resides outside I-285, which circles the city at a distance of 12 miles (19 kilometers). Older towns, many of which are county seats, serve as subcenters in the region. These towns include Conyers, Cumming, Douglasville, Griffin, Lawrenceville, Marietta, and McDonough.
Atlanta’s suburban areas offer many historical sites as well as new housing developments and large business districts. Expressway development in the late 1900’s helped generate suburban “downtowns” anchored by major shopping malls. The malls attracted high-rise office towers, condominiums, and hotels. These developments include complexes around Cumberland Mall/Galleria Mall in Cobb County and Perimeter Mall in DeKalb County.
People
Ethnic groups.
African Americans make up Atlanta’s largest single ethnic group. They account for about half of the city’s population. In the entire metropolitan area, white residents make up about half of the population and African Americans about one third. Asians and Hispanics represent small but growing parts of the area’s population.
Housing.
Atlanta is famous for its tree-covered neighborhoods. The Druid Hills area is one of the nation’s best-preserved planned suburban neighborhoods. Its plan was based on a design by American landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted. The neighborhood is known for its large houses, broad front lawns, and curving streets shaded by towering trees. Olmsted-inspired design principles also can be found in other historic Atlanta neighborhoods.
Between 1995 and 2010, the Atlanta Housing Authority (AHA) tore down nearly all its large public housing projects. Instead, the AHA housed tenants in privately owned buildings. The agency issued housing vouchers that permitted tenants to choose where they would live.
Education.
An elected Board of Education supervises the Atlanta public school system. The Atlanta area also has many church-supported and other private schools.
Atlanta has many accredited colleges and universities. The largest are Georgia State University and the Georgia Institute of Technology, often called Georgia Tech. Atlanta has the largest complex of predominantly African American colleges and universities in the United States. The complex includes Clark Atlanta University, Morehouse College, Spelman College, and the Interdenominational Theological Center. Outside the city limits are Emory University in DeKalb County, Agnes Scott College and Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Kennesaw State University in Kennesaw, and the University of West Georgia in Carrollton.
Social problems.
Atlanta faces many social problems experienced by other large urban areas. Major problems include crime and homelessness. Much of the crime is associated with the problems of poverty and drug abuse. Rising housing costs have contributed to homelessness. Substandard housing is a problem in some older neighborhoods in poor areas of the central city. A number of private organizations, including Georgia-based Habitat for Humanity, run programs to assist in renovating or building houses for the poor.
Cultural life
The arts.
The Atlanta Ballet, founded in 1929, and the Atlanta Opera, founded in 1979, perform at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre. This facility also hosts Broadway shows, concerts, and other events. The Fox Theatre hosts Broadway shows, Atlanta Ballet performances, concerts, and films. The Woodruff Arts Center supports the Alliance Theatre and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Other theaters include Downtown’s Balzer Theater and the 7 Stages Theatre in Little Five Points. Arts centers at area universities include the Rialto Center for the Arts at Georgia State University; the Ferst Center for the Arts at Georgia Tech, the Donna and Marvin Schwartz Center for Performing Arts at Emory University, and Spivey Hall at Clayton State University.
Museums and libraries.
Collections at the High Museum of Art emphasize European and American paintings and sculptures from the 1800’s and 1900’s. The museum is part of the Woodruff Arts Center. Other art museums in the Atlanta area include Hammonds House Museum and the Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University. Atlanta’s public library system has a downtown facility and branches throughout the city.
The Atlanta History Center, in the Buckhead neighborhood, is a complex of historic houses, a museum, and a library of local history. It is known for its Civil War and 1996 Olympics collections. It displays the Cyclorama, a circular painting of the Battle of Atlanta of 1864. The center also operates the Margaret Mitchell House in Midtown. Mitchell wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Gone with the Wind (1936). The Fernbank Museum of Natural History includes a planetarium and a forest preserve. The Wren’s Nest museum honors the journalist Joel Chandler Harris. Harris is famous for his “Uncle Remus” stories, which were published in the late 1800’s. The College Football Hall of Fame contains historical artifacts and numerous interactive exhibits.
The Carter Presidential Center stands on a hill overlooking Downtown. This large complex houses the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum, which contains items associated with Carter’s term as president of the United States.
Recreation.
Grant Park, south of Downtown, includes Zoo Atlanta and a number of walking paths. Near Centennial Olympic Park is the Georgia Aquarium, one of the largest aquariums in the world. The National Park Service manages a 48-mile (77-kilometer) stretch of parkland along the Chattahoochee River in the heart of metropolitan Atlanta.
Atlanta has a number of professional sports teams. The city is the home of the Atlanta Falcons of the National Football League, Atlanta United FC of Major League Soccer, and the Atlanta Hawks of the National Basketball Association. The Atlanta Braves baseball team of the National League plays in nearby Cobb County.
Economy
The Atlanta metropolitan area is a center for service industries. It ranks as a leader in trade, transportation, and communication. Service-related jobs employ about 90 percent of the area’s people. Manufacturing employs about 5 percent. The remainder work in such industries as construction, agriculture, mining, and utilities.
Service industries.
Atlanta has a thriving wholesale trade industry. Much of this trade takes place in the huge downtown AmericasMart. Numerous large retail trade centers serve both Atlantans and visitors.
Atlanta is a transportation and communication hub. Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in College Park ranks among the world’s busiest airports for passenger and cargo flights. Delta Air Lines is headquartered in Atlanta. The city is also the chief railroad center of the Southeast. United Parcel Service, Inc., the largest U.S. package delivery company, has its headquarters in Atlanta. The Cable News Network (CNN) also is based in the city. Many newspapers serve the metropolitan area. The major paper is The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Government services also contribute to Atlanta’s economy. A number of state and federal government agencies have offices in the area. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) maintains its headquarters just outside the city limits and has many laboratories in Atlanta. Military installations in the area include Dobbins Air Reserve Base near Marietta.
Manufacturing.
The chief manufactured products of the Atlanta area include food, transportation equipment, electronics, and textiles. The Coca-Cola Company has its headquarters in Atlanta. Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, which makes military planes, has a manufacturing and design facility in Marietta.
Government
Atlanta has a mayor-council form of government. The city’s voters elect the mayor, the City Council president, and the 15 members of the council to four-year terms. The Atlanta area has over 60 other local government bodies, including county and city governments, local boards of education, and a regional transportation authority.
History
Early days.
The Muscogee, or Creek, people inhabited the Atlanta area before white settlers reached the region. In 1813, the U.S. Army sent troops commanded by Lieutenant George R. Gilmer to the area to build a fort along the Chattahoochee River to protect farmers who were coming to the area. The site, known as Standing Peachtree, became an important trading post. But because the Chattahoochee River was not navigable, there was little chance for a city to develop in the region.
Railroads brought the potential for urban growth. In 1837, surveyor Stephen Long set the eastern terminus (end) for the Western and Atlantic Railroad at the site of what is now the Georgia World Congress Center. There the Western and Atlantic joined lines connecting to the Atlantic Coast cities of Charleston, South Carolina, and Savannah, Georgia. A town called Terminus was established at the site. In 1845, the town sought a new name. J. Edgar Thompson, a railroad engineer, suggested Atlanta.
Destruction and redevelopment.
Atlanta was chartered as a city in 1847. Fulton County was established in 1853, with Atlanta as the county seat. After the American Civil War began in 1861, Atlanta’s railroad connections made it a strategic target for the Union Army. In 1864, Union troops led by General William T. Sherman captured Atlanta and burned most of it to the ground.
After the Civil War ended in 1865, Atlanta was quickly rebuilt. It replaced Milledgeville as the state capital in 1868. By 1880, Atlanta had over 37,000 residents and ranked as Georgia’s largest city. The city government that formed after the war included an African American member of the City Council. But white people slowly strengthened their hold on power by restricting Black people from voting and keeping them from holding elective office.
In 1881, Atlanta held the International Cotton Exposition to focus attention on its potential as a manufacturing center. The city’s Cotton States and International Exposition of 1895 promoted Atlanta’s potential as a regional transportation center. The popular soft drink Coca-Cola was invented in Atlanta in 1886. By 1900, Atlanta had become an important manufacturing and retailing center and had nearly 90,000 residents.
As a result of laws passed by the Georgia General Assembly, the city began to impose segregation in streetcars and other public facilities at the end of the 1800’s. In a 1906 race massacre, white mobs roamed the streets of Downtown, attacking and beating African Americans. The massacre resulted in at least 25 deaths and numerous injuries. It led Black businesses to move to Auburn Avenue, which gradually became an important street for Black businesses and Black churches.
Gate City of the South.
In 1917, a fire destroyed about 2,000 buildings in Atlanta. The city was again quickly rebuilt. By 1920, Atlanta’s 14 rail lines and 4 major railroads earned it the name Gate City of the South. Through a promotional campaign in the late 1920’s, the Atlanta area attracted regional offices of national corporations. In 1936, one of the nation’s first federally funded low-income housing projects, Techwood Homes, was opened for white people. A separate complex, University Homes, was opened for Black people in 1938.
The mid-1900’s.
World War II brought new military installations and industries to Atlanta. In 1943, the area’s first naval air station opened on the site of what is now DeKalb-Peachtree Airport, near Chamblee. Many farmworkers moved to the Atlanta area to work in war industries and remained after the war ended in 1945. By 1950, about 330,000 people lived in the city, and the metropolitan area had grown to about 727,000. In 1952, Atlanta annexed 81 square miles (210 square kilometers) of suburban land to the north, west, and south of the city, adding about 100,000 residents to its population.
The 1960’s were a period of major growth and social change in Atlanta. The area’s first expressways were completed in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, finished in 1965, became the home of the city’s first major league sports team, the Braves.
Auburn Avenue was the site of an early struggle for civil rights that had begun to emerge in the 1940’s and 1950’s. In 1957, Martin Luther King, Jr., returned to Atlanta, his hometown, after rising to prominence as a leader of the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott. In Atlanta, King joined with other ministers to found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). The SCLC coordinated the work of civil rights groups that demonstrated against segregation in the South.
By 1960, African Americans in Atlanta had regained the right to vote and were having some influence on public policy. But Atlanta remained a segregated city, and no African Americans held elective office. In May 1960, students from the Atlanta University Center colleges started a public protest by holding sit-ins at restaurants in the Capitol, City Hall, and other public buildings after they were denied service. White political and civic leaders scrambled to develop a desegregation plan, and their actions helped to prevent violent racial unrest. Atlanta peacefully integrated its public schools in 1961. Also during the 1960’s, many white people moved to the suburbs, and the number of registered Black voters in the city increased. Maynard Jackson was elected mayor in 1973, becoming the first Black mayor of a major Southern city. He was reelected in 1977.
The late 1900’s.
Atlanta’s population grew to about 495,000 in 1970. The population decreased to about 394,000 by 1990 but rose again in the 1990’s. Employment opportunities in the Atlanta area attracted workers from other parts of the United States.
Atlanta was the site of many major construction projects in the late 1900’s. Three Downtown sports complexes were completed in the 1990’s. Atlanta hosted the Summer Olympic Games in 1996. Also in the 1990’s, the city’s aging sewerage system had become a major problem facing Atlanta’s city government. In 1993, a sewer line collapsed, destroying a parking lot and part of a Midtown building. A $4-billion project to overhaul the city’s storm water runoff and wastewater systems began in 2002.
The early 2000’s.
The region’s population continued to grow during the first two decades of the 2000’s. Most new arrivals settled in the suburbs, causing the metropolitan population to soar from about 1 1/2 million in 1970 to about 6 million in 2020. The growth led to traffic congestion and air quality problems. Projects such as Atlantic Station, a complex of offices, stores, and homes in Midtown, were designed to reduce the area’s dependence on automobiles. Heat and drought also posed problems for Atlantans. From 2007 to 2009, a drought led to record low water levels in the reservoirs supplying Atlanta. Local governments imposed limits on water usage.
In 2005, Atlanta worked with private companies and community groups to move forward on a project called the Atlanta BeltLine. The project, built largely along unused rail lines, will connect dozens of Atlanta neighborhoods. The BeltLine, when completed, is expected to include a 22-mile (35-kilometer) ring of parks, trails, light rail transportation, and economic and housing developments.
Voters elected Shirley Franklin mayor of Atlanta in 2001. Franklin became the city’s first woman mayor. She won reelection in 2005. In 2010, former state Senator Kasim Reed succeeded Franklin as mayor. Keisha Lance Bottoms succeeded Reed in 2018. City Council member Andre Dickens became mayor in 2022.
