While I was in high school our chorus group took a trip to Gatlinburg, Tennessee via Atlanta, Georgia … We hit up the Coke Museum and of course Underground Atlanta. The underground was literally across a lot from the Coke place so it was cool for us high-schoolers to visit (in groups of course!). Some of the kids were telling other kids about the “history” of the underground, saying that the tunnels were built in order to be an “underground railroad” for slaves and also such things like the “original” Atlanta (like, before General Sherman burned his way though) was burned so badly that they didn’t have the money to repair so they just built OVER it - hence, the underground! Um, wow … nothing like a few high school “urban legends” huh? They make me laugh now, but I really believed them back then.
According to Wikipedia:
The buildings were built during Atlanta’s post-Civil War boom, between 1866 and 1871, when the city’s population doubled from 11,000 to 22,000 residents. In 1869, the Georgia Railroad Freight Depot was constructed to replace the one destroyed by Sherman’s troops in 1864. The depot, which stands at the entrance of Underground Atlanta, remains the oldest extant building in downtown Atlanta. Besides the train station, the bustling district included hotels, banks, law offices and saloons.
By 1910, several iron bridges had been built to cross the railroad tracks at Union Street. At the suggestion of Atlanta architect Haralson Bleckley, the bridges were rebuilt in concrete and connected by a linear mall between them. Eventually, Bleckley envisioned public plazas between the bridges, but only one, Plaza Park [later Peachtree Fountains Plaza], was ever built.
As the construction took place in the 1920s, merchants began to move their operations to the second floor of their buildings, and turned the original ground floors storefronts into basements for storage and service. Some of the basements became natural sites of speakeasys and juke joints, with music and illegal drinking a common occurrence.
By the end of the 1920s, the street level had been raised up by one-and-a-half stories and a five-block area was completely covered up. For the next forty years, as Atlanta continued to grow, the 12 acre area was effectively abandoned and forgotten.
In 1968 the original storefronts were rediscovered and the district was declared a historic site. Many architectural features from a century earlier had survived intact including decorative brickwork, granite archways, ornate marble, cast-iron pilasters, hand-carved wooden posts and gas streetlamps.
Plans were made to restore and reopen “the city beneath the city” as a retail and enterainment district. On April 8, 1969, “Underground Atlanta” officially opened with new restaurants, bars, nightclubs and music venues installed in the old individual storefronts.
Underground sat mostly dormant for most of the 1980s. Vagrants occupied several of the historic buildings, some of which were destroyed by fires. In 1982, newly-elected Mayor Andrew Young vowed to reopen Underground as part of his plan to reinvent downtown Atlanta.
On June 15, 1989, Underground Atlanta reopened a second time as more of a modern shopping mall than an entertainment district. Its 140 tenants included the retail outlets Sam Goody and Olivia Newton-John’s Koala Blue as well as a reopened Dante’s Down the Hatch in the Kenny’s Alley area. Although the historic buildings and architecture remained a major draw, some critics felt that the now-sanitized district has lost its original charm and lively atmosphere.
It’s a super neat shopping area with lots of charm and old buildings (which I am obsessed with). So, if you are in Atlanta be sure to visit! Also, if you live in Atlanta - be sure to get in your Atlanta resumes - maybe you can get a cool job at this historic place!
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