The Whitehall Street Retail Historic District is a

historic district A historic district or heritage district is a section of a city which contains older buildings considered valuable for historical or architectural reasons. In some countries or jurisdictions, historic districts receive legal protection from c ...

Atlanta Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,715 ...

, Georgia,

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. The district is centered on

Peachtree Street Peachtree Street is one of several major streets running through the city of Atlanta. Beginning at Five Points (Atlanta), Five Points in downtown Atlanta, it runs North through Midtown Atlanta, Midtown; a few blocks after entering into Buckhead ...

and Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and includes Broad, Forsyth, and Mitchell Streets. It was added to 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 v ...

in 2020.

History

The name of the

comes from a previous name for

, one of the main roads in

. Since early in the city's history, this corridor of Whitehall Street was considered a major retail center, with the Atlanta Preservation Center calling it "Atlanta's commercial and retail core." In the

Antebellum era In the history of the Southern United States, the Antebellum Period (from la, ante bellum, lit= before the war) spanned the end of the War of 1812 to the start of the American Civil War in 1861. The Antebellum South was characterized by the ...

, the area was also the site of the city's

slave market A slave market is a place where slaves are bought and sold. These markets became a key phenomenon in the history of slavery. Slave markets in the Ottoman Empire In the Ottoman Empire during the mid-14th century, slaves were traded in special ...

. In 1907, the M. Rich Building was completed, and during the early 1900s, many notable companies operated in this district, including Rich's, H. L. Green, Kress, and

McCrory's McCrory Stores or J.G. McCrory's was a chain of five and dime stores in the United States based in York, Pennsylvania. The stores typically sold shoes, clothing, housewares, fabrics, penny candy, toys, cosmetics, and often included a lunch cou ...

. The district is also notable for the

sit-in A sit-in or sit-down is a form of direct action that involves one or more people occupying an area for a protest, often to promote political, social, or economic change. The protestors gather conspicuously in a space or building, refusing to mo ...

s that occurred there during the

civil rights movement The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional Racial segregation in the United States, racial segregation, Racial discrimination ...

of the 1960s. In April 2019, the district was added to Georgia's register of historic places, and on August 6, 2020, it was added to the

. According to the Atlanta Preservation Center, the district showcases architectural styles including

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...

, Art Moderne, Italian Renaissance Revival, and

Neoclassical Revival Neoclassical architecture is an architectural style produced by the Neoclassicism, Neoclassical movement that began in the mid-18th century in Italy and France. It became one of the most prominent architectural styles in the Western world. The pr ...

, with notable architects A. Ten Eyck Brown and Willis F. Denny contributing to the district.

References

{{Atlanta neighborhoods Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Georgia (U.S. state) National Register of Historic Places in Atlanta Neighborhoods in Atlanta

History

See also

References