It was on this day in 1959 that a Kansas City real estate developer named Ed Noble cut the ribbon on Lenox Square, which he built on land that had formerly been the country estate of Atlanta's Ottley family. When it opened, Lenox was the largest shopping center in Southeast, and its opening both established Atlanta as a 'national' city and helped usher in the beginning of downtown Atlanta's decline as a shopping and gathering place, paving the way for other malls like Perimeter and Cumberland. The original Lenox was open-air and bore a rather striking modernistic design, anchored by Rich's & Davidson's and, of course, had 6,000 parking spaces. [WABE]
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