Around Atlanta, recent snapshots from a bygone city

Random glimpses from a rapidly changing urban landscape

By Josh Green@JoshGreen1234 Aug 10, 2016, 2:59pm EDT

The Beltline, before your mom wanted to live there.

Since its inception, Atlanta has had an almost insatiable appetite for construction, and the city has certainly taken lumps for subsequent, unflinching destruction. But this raze-and-build-anew craze may have never been as ubiquitous as right now, in post-recession Atlanta.

With summer’s building frenzy in full swing from Brookhaven to College Park, it seemed an opportune time to pause for a moment and reflect on a city that was vastly different, in many places, just a few years ago.

We’ve dug deep into the photo archives to find vantages and places that don’t exist in Atlanta anymore — some for the better, others probably not.

So lace up your kicks, and have a stroll down this built-environment memory lane ...

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In the summer of 2013, anyone exiting Savi Urban Market in Inman Park would find this across the street. The collection of low-rise retail and office structures (and one very busy valet lot) was replaced by Inman Quarter:

Here’s another angle from Highland Avenue:

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Before the Atlanta Beltline’s Eastside Trail was winning international accolades for urban redevelopment, and before the advent of trail-adjacent hotspots like Ladybird Grove & Mess Hall and the Bantam Pub, the neglected former rail corridor was a desolate, itchy place, as seen here in 2011 and 2012:

This Old Fourth Ward lot, pre-townhomes.

The beginnings of Historic Fourth Ward Park’s active field and skatepark, long before the yoga hordes.

In the distance, the hulking brick structure that would become Ponce City Market.

This makeshift bridge offered hope that the Eastside Trail might actually happen.

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By the fall of 2013, this prime slice of Midtown real estate across the street from the High Museum had festered for years. John Wieland’s pricey, ultra-exclusive One Museum Place condos are currently finishing here:

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Speaking of Wieland, the veteran Atlanta developer bulldozed this circa-1929 Old Fourth Ward structure — originally James G. Dodson's Ironized Yeast Company before being taken over by the Creomulsion Company — and its inimitable architectural features in early 2015, despite concerns from neighborhood officials:

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Here’s Krog Street Market in 2013, before Bon Appétit magazine named it "one of the country’s coolest food halls" (and before the advent of $14 sandwiches) ...