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 de Leon Avenue ( ), often simply called Ponce, provides a link between Atlanta, Decatur, Clarkston, and Stone Mountain, Georgia. It was named for Ponce de Leon Springs, in turn from explorer Juan Ponce de León, but is not pronounced ...

("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 and the Grove Arcade in

Asheville, North Carolina Asheville ( ) is a city in, and the county seat of, Buncombe County, North Carolina. Located at the confluence of the French Broad and Swannanoa rivers, it is the largest city in Western North Carolina, and the state's 11th-most populous ci ...

) purchased the land. Grove owned a pharmaceutical company that provided the means for him to acquire 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 f ...

streetcar line. The original name was St. Louis Park; it was changed "to honor a family friend and mentor" Colonel

John DeWitt Clinton Atkins John DeWitt Clinton Atkins (June 4, 1825 – June 2, 1908) was an American slave owner, politician and a member of both the United States House of Representatives and Confederate Congress from Tennessee. Biography Johnathan Atkins was born at ...

, 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 of the Confederate States of America that existed from 1861 to 1865. Its actions were for the most part concerned with measures to establish a new nat ...

. A section of Atkins Park has been listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...

since 1982.

Government

Atkins Park has its own community associatio
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