Atkins Park is an
intown neighborhood of Atlanta, Georgia, nestled against the southeast corner of the neighborhood of
Virginia-Highland, west of Briarcliff Avenue and north of
Ponce de Leon Avenue ("Ponce"). It consists of just three streets—St. Louis Place, St. Charles Place, and St. Augustine Place—as well as an internal sidewalk known as Malcolm's Way (in honor of the local citizen most associated with it) that bisects them from St. Charles to St. Louis. It was originally designed to give quicker access to the streetcar stop at Ponce.
History
The first use of the land after its formal platting was farmland. Between 1902 and 1905,
Edwin Wiley Grove (a St. Louis businessman who later developed the famous
Grove Park Inn
The Grove Park Inn is a historic resort hotel on the western-facing slope of Sunset Mountain within the Blue Ridge Mountains, in Asheville, North Carolina. The hotel has been visited by various Presidents of the United States.
Listed on the Nati ...
and the
Grove Arcade in
Asheville, North Carolina
Asheville ( ) is a city in Buncombe County, North Carolina, United States. Located at the confluence of the French Broad River, French Broad and Swannanoa River, Swannanoa rivers, it is the county seat of Buncombe County. It is the most populou ...
) purchased the land. Grove plowed profits from his pharmaceutical company into real estate for the development of neighborhoods. Development of Atkins Park began in 1912 as a streetcar suburb of Atlanta, linked to downtown via the
Nine-Mile Circle
The Nine-Mile Circle (today often called the "Nine Mile Trolley") was a streetcar line of the Atlanta Street Railway, later the Atlanta Consolidated Street Railway which went from downtown Atlanta to today's Virginia-Highland neighborhood as fo ...
streetcar line. The original name was St. Louis Park; it was changed "to honor a family friend and mentor": Colonel
John DeWitt Clinton Atkins, a representative of Tennessee in both the U.S. Congress and the
Confederate Congress
The Confederate States Congress was both the provisional and permanent legislative assembly/legislature of the Confederate States of America that existed from February 1861 to April/June 1865, during the American Civil War. Its actions were, ...
.
A section of Atkins Park has been listed on the
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...
since 1982.
[
]
Government
Atkins Park has its own community association, calle
APNA
For purposes of formal civic participation in matters that go before the city's Neighborhood Planning Unit (NPU-F, in this case), Atkins Park is part of the Virginia-Highland neighborhood and its associatio
Virginia-Highland Civic Association
(VHCA). APNA provides a member of its own choice to the VHCA Board.
Park
North Highland Park, a small 0.41-acre park purchased by the VHCA in 2008 and formally opened in 2012, is located on the site of a former public library at the northeast corner of St. Charles Place and North Highland Avenue.
References
External links
Atlanta City Council ordinance establishing the historic district
including detailed history of Atkins Park
{{Atlanta neighborhoods
Streetcar suburbs
Neighborhoods in Atlanta
Historic districts in Metro Atlanta
Bungalow architecture in Georgia (U.S. state)
Colonial Revival architecture in Georgia (U.S. state)
Tudor Revival architecture in Georgia (U.S. state)
Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Georgia (U.S. state)
National Register of Historic Places in Atlanta