Olympia Building and Coca-Cola sign Atlanta

Five Points is a district of

Atlanta, Georgia Atlanta ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Georgia (U.S. state), most populous city in the U.S. state of Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia. It is the county seat, seat of Fulton County, Georg ...

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

, the primary reference for the

downtown ''Downtown'' is a term primarily used in American and Canadian English to refer to a city's sometimes commercial, cultural and often the historical, political, and geographic heart. It is often synonymous with its central business district ( ...

area.

Description

The name refers to the convergence of Marietta Street, Edgewood Avenue, Decatur Street, and two legs of

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 ...

(the south-southwestern leg was originally

Whitehall Whitehall is a road and area in the City of Westminster, Central London, England. The road forms the first part of the A roads in Zone 3 of the Great Britain numbering scheme, A3212 road from Trafalgar Square to Chelsea, London, Chelsea. It ...

Street, before a section of Whitehall was renamed as an extension of Peachtree Street to give businesses south of Five Points the prestige of a Peachtree Street address). Five Points is usually considered by Atlantans to be the center of town, and it is the origin of the

street address An address is a collection of information, presented in a mostly fixed format, used to give the location of a building, apartment, or other structure or a plot of land, generally using political boundaries and street names as references, along ...

ing system for the city and county, although four of the streets (except Edgewood) are rotated at least 30° clockwise from their nominal directions, along with the rest of the downtown street grid.

Woodruff Park Woodruff Park, named for Robert W. Woodruff, is located in the heart of Downtown Atlanta, Georgia. The park's are north of Edgewood Ave, between Peachtree Street NE and Park Place NE. The park includes a fountain, a performance pavilion, ...

is on the northeast corner of the intersection, between Peachtree Street and Edgewood Avenue. The Five Points MARTA station is one block south of the intersection on Peachtree Street. A large round Coca-Cola sign overlooks Five Points, atop the Olympia Building on the east side of the intersection between Edgewood Avenue and Decatur Avenue. The nearly 50-foot tall sign has a 33-foot lighted neon face and faces up and down Peachtree Street. A lighted portion at the bottom of the sign gives the current time and temperature. At the other corners of Five Points are located:

(northeast); the William-Oliver Building (northwest);

Georgia State University Georgia State University (Georgia State, State, or GSU) is a Public university, public research university in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. Founded in 1913, it is one of the University System of Georgia's four research universities. It is al ...

's Andrew Young School of Policy Studies (southwest); and a parking garage (southeast). On a triangular island in the intersection stands the George Beasley sculpture Five Points Monument, alluding to the water tower formerly standing on the spot as well as the

streetcar A tram (also known as a streetcar or trolley in Canada and the United States) is an urban rail transit in which vehicles, whether individual railcars or multiple-unit trains, run on tramway tracks on urban public streets; some include s ...

tracks that once existed in the intersection.

History

Prior to the arrival of white settlers, Five Points was the intersection of two Creek Indian trails, the Peachtree Trail and the Sandtown Trail. In 1845, George Washington Collier opened a

grocery store A grocery store ( AE), grocery shop or grocer's shop ( BE) or simply grocery is a retail store that primarily retails a general range of food products, which may be fresh or packaged. In everyday US usage, however, "grocery store" is a synon ...

at what is now Five Points, and the store later served as Atlanta's first

post office A post office is a public facility and a retailer that provides mail services, such as accepting letter (message), letters and parcel (package), parcels, providing post office boxes, and selling postage stamps, packaging, and stationery. Post o ...

in 1846. In 1848, Five Points served as the location of Atlanta's first mayoral election. Moses Formwalt became Atlanta's first mayor, defeating Jonathan Norcross. In 1875, Atlanta's drinking water system began with the construction of three

artesian well An artesian well is a well that brings groundwater to the surface without pumping because it is under pressure within a body of rock or sediment known as an aquifer. When trapped water in an aquifer is surrounded by layers of Permeability (ea ...

s at Five Points. The system delivered water to Atlanta's residents via wooden pipes. Until the 1960s, Five Points represented the central hub of Atlanta. With the advent of

urban sprawl Urban sprawl (also known as suburban sprawl or urban encroachment) is defined as "the spreading of urban developments (such as houses and shopping centers) on undeveloped land near a city". Urban sprawl has been described as the unrestricted ...

and the development of shopping malls, the economic and demographic center of Atlanta shifted northward, and Five Points went into decay. By the 21st century, the area was revitalizing, mostly due to the expansion of

, which maintains a large footprint in Five Points.

References

{{coord, 33.75432, -84.38979, region:US-GA, display=title Neighborhoods in Atlanta Districts of Downtown Atlanta