Markers of Urban Renewal in the Built Environment
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Union Station was a train station in downtown Atlanta that opened in 1930 and served the Georgia Railroad, Atlantic Coast Line, and Louisville and Nashville line. The station was razed in the early 1970s.
Courtesy of the Atlanta History Center, Atlanta History Photograph Collection.
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Aerial view of downtown Atlanta in 1980, after the construction of interstate highways changed the urban fabric of the city.
Courtesy of the Atlanta History Center, Cotten Alston Photographs, 1972-1998, undated.
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This photograph from 1977 shows the construction of the Richard B. Russell Federal Building, which replaced the former Union Station in downtown Atlanta.
Courtesy of Georgia State University Special Collections, Atlanta Journal-Constitution Photographs.
Evidence of urban renewal’s harmful legacies can be found throughout American cities large and small. In Atlanta, it persists in the presence of a Downtown Connector that bisects multiple neighborhoods; in a shuddered civic center that awaits redevelopment; and in the absence of historic architecture, particularly downtown, where landmark structures such as Atlanta Union Station, Terminal Station, and the Kimball House Hotel were all demolished.