SoNo (South of North Avenue) is a sub-district of

downtown Atlanta Downtown Atlanta is the central business district of Atlanta, Georgia, United States. The largest of the city's three commercial districts (Midtown Atlanta, Midtown and Buckhead being the others), it is the location of many corporate and region ...

Georgia Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the South Caucasus * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the southeastern United States Georgia may also refer to: People and fictional characters * Georgia (name), a list of pe ...

, just south of Midtown. The area was defined and named by T. Brian Glass while working on a rezoning committee with Central Atlanta Progress in 2005 in order to better establish an identity for the area and give it a hipper image. SoNo refers to the area of Downtown bounded by North Avenue on the north, Central Park Place on the east and the

Downtown Connector In Downtown Atlanta, the Downtown Connector or 75/85 (pronounced "seventy-five eighty-five") is the concurrent section of Interstate 75 and Interstate 85 through the core of the city. Beginning at the I-85/ Langford Parkway interchang ...

(Interstate-75/85) on the west and south. Ongoing

urban renewal Urban renewal (sometimes called urban regeneration in the United Kingdom and urban redevelopment in the United States) is a program of land redevelopment often used to address real or perceived urban decay. Urban renewal involves the clearing ...

efforts in the new neighborhood seek to establish a chic cultural identity for the underdeveloped area, as well as reunite the Midtown and Downtown commercial districts (which have remained mostly divided since the construction of the

through the heart of the city), including a proposed "interstate cap" over the highway that would extend Mayor's Park south along

Peachtree Street Peachtree Street is one of several major streets running through the city of Atlanta, Georgia, United States. Beginning at Five Points (Atlanta), Five Points in downtown Atlanta, it runs North through Midtown Atlanta, Midtown; a few blocks afte ...

to Baker Street. SoNo is home to several attractions, including

Emory University Hospital Midtown Emory University Hospital Midtown (originally Crawford W. Long Memorial Hospital, sometimes Crawford Long Hospital or simply Crawford Long, and formerly Emory Crawford Long Hospital) is a 511-bed acute care teaching hospital located in the SoNo ...

, the

Atlanta Civic Center The Atlanta Civic Center is a theater (building), theater located in Atlanta, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia. The theater, which seats 4,600, regularly hosted touring productions of Broadway musicals, concerts, seminars, comedy acts, and high s ...

Shakespeare Tavern The Shakespeare Tavern is an Elizabethan era, Elizabethan playhouse located in downtown Atlanta, downtown Atlanta, GA, Atlanta, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia, United States. Starting productions at Manuel's Tavern in Atlanta in 1984, the Tavern ...

and the Bank of America Plaza, the city's tallest building. It also is home to the historic Baltimore Block and Rufus M. Rose House. SoNo's centerpiece Renaissance and Central Parks were also the site of Atlanta's annual

Music Midtown Music Midtown is a large music festival held in Atlanta, Georgia, annually from 1994 to 2005, after which it returned in 2011 following a six-year hiatus. The festival ran consecutively from 2011-2019 with a cancellation in 2020 due to the COVID- ...

festival, before moving to

Piedmont Park Piedmont Park is an urban forest and park in Atlanta, Georgia, United States, located about northeast of Downtown, between the Midtown and Virginia Highland neighborhoods. Originally the land was owned by Dr. Benjamin Walker, who used it as ...

Public transport Public transport (also known as public transit, mass transit, or simply transit) are forms of transport available to the general public. It typically uses a fixed schedule, route and charges a fixed fare. There is no rigid definition of whic ...

ation is provided by

MARTA Marta may refer to: People * Marta (given name), a feminine given name * Märta, a feminine given name * Marta (surname) * Marta (footballer) (born 1986), Brazilian professional footballer Places * Marta (river), an Italian river that flow ...

with buses and with the north-south rail line serving the Civic Center station.

History

In the last decades of the 19th century and the first years of the 20th, Peachtree Street was a street of elegant mansions — the Rufus M. Rose House being the last remaining example in what is now SoNo. These gradually were replaced by commercial buildings, large churches, apartment buildings and boarding houses and by the end of the 1920s the transformation was complete. With suburbanization in the mid-20th century, the area went into a period of decline. When given its name and new image by T. Brian Glass while working on a rezoning committee with Central Atlanta Progress in 2005, SoNo had not yet participated substantially in the renaissance of either downtown to the south or Midtown to the north. The area from Piedmont east to Central Park had a different history — this developed as the

Buttermilk Bottom Buttermilk Bottom, also known as Buttermilk Bottoms or Black Bottom, was an African-American neighborhood in central Atlanta, centered on the area where the Atlanta Civic Center now stands in the Old Fourth Ward. It was considered a slum area, h ...

slum area, which was razed in the 1960s. Most of the land then remained empty, the Convention Center (built 1967), now the Boisfeuillet Jones Atlanta Civic Center, being an exception. Finally, in the mid-1980s new, mostly mixed-income projects were built on the land, while some of the land was used for today's Renaissance Park.

References

{{coord, 33.4558, -84.231, display=title Neighborhoods in Atlanta Districts of Downtown Atlanta