Inman Park

Inman Park Historic District[1]
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
U.S. Historic district
Historic Bungalows resembling the new ones above are common architecture for the area
Location:	Roughly bounded by Freedom Parkway, DeKalb and Lake Aves. (original) and Roughly bounded by Lake, Hurt, and DeKalb Aves., and Krog St. (increase), Atlanta, Georgia
Coordinates:	33°45′20″N 84°21′34″W / 33.75556°N 84.35944°W / 33.75556; -84.35944Coordinates: 33°45′20″N 84°21′34″W / 33.75556°N 84.35944°W / 33.75556; -84.35944
Built:	1889
Architect:	Multiple
Architectural style:	Colonial Revival, Queen Anne, Shingle Style (original); Queen Anne, Stick/Eastlake, et al. (increase)
Governing body:	Private
NRHP Reference#:	73000621 and 01000973[2]
Added to NRHP:	July 23, 1973 (original) September 16, 2001 (increase)

Inman Park is a neighborhood of the city of Atlanta, Georgia, and its first planned suburb. It was named for Samuel M. Inman.

Architecture

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

  Beath-Dickey House

• 
• 

  Trolley Barn

• 

  Park

Inman Park contains Atlanta's best collection of residential architecture from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Styles include Queen Anne, high-style Italianate and Romanesque mansion as well as smaller bungalows, shotguns, and foursquares. Inman Park was Atlanta's first example of a garden suburb, with great attention paid to street layout, parks and other public space, and would inspire other Atlanta garden suburbs such as the Frederick Law Olmsted-designed Druid Hills.

There are two historic districts within the Inman Park neighborhoods: the Inman Park historic district, and the Inman Park-Moreland Historic District, originally the separate suburb of Moreland Park.^[3]

History

Today's neighborhood of Inman Park includes areas that were originally considered:

• Inman Park proper (today the Inman Park Historic District)
• Moreland Park (today the Inman Park-Moreland Historic District)
• Industrial areas on the western side, now Inman Park Village

The area was part of the battlefield in the Battle of Atlanta in 1864.

Atlanta's first streetcar suburb

Robert Winship home, 1896

Beath-Dickey House, 1896

Phil Haralson home, 1896

George Edward King home, 1896

Inman Park (proper) was planned in the late 1880s by Joel Hurt, a civil engineer and real-estate developer who intended to create a rural oasis connected to the city by the first of Atlanta's electric streetcar lines. The East Atlanta Land Company acquired and developed more than 130 acres east of the city and Hurt named the new suburb for his friend and business associate, Samuel M. Inman. Joseph Forsyth Johnson was hired as landscape designer for Inman Park who included curvilinear street designs and liberal usage of open spaces in his planning.^[4][5][6]

The Atlanta Constitution in 1896 grandly described Inman Park:

"High up above the city, where the purest breezes and the brightest sunshine drove away the germs of disease, and where nature had lavished her best gifts, the gentlemen who conceived the though of Inman Park found the locality above all others which they desired. It was to be a place of homes, of pretty homes, green lawns, and desirable inhabitants. And all save those who would make desirable residents have been excluded..." "It's the prettiest, highest, healthiest and most desirable locality I ever saw. Everybody is friendly and neighborly. There are no negroes and not a single objectionable inhabitant. And as far as accessibility it ranks second to no residence portion of the city. We have three car lines and frequent schedules."^[7]

Moreland Park was by contrast developed as a more traditional, incremental building of sub-divisions as opposed to the grand plan for Inman Park proper.

Sketches of three Inman Park houses, 1895; Ernest Woodruff's house at top; Beath-Dickey House at bottom

Decline

The arrival of the automobile allowed upper class Atlantans to live in suburbs farther north from downtown workplaces, such as Morningside and what is now considered Buckhead. Inman Park became less fashionable and the exuberant Victorian architecture came to seem dated. The mansions came to be subdivided into apartments.

Similar to other intown neighborhoods such as Virginia Highland, Inman Park fell to blight during the white middle and upper class exodus to the northern suburbs in the 1950s and 1960s, and was:

"an economically depressed neighborhood of mostly blue-collar white folks, elderly couples who could not afford to move out and families on disability and welfare. They lived in rented bungalows or big houses chopped up into tiny roach-infested apartments."^[8]

Atlanta's first intown neighborhood to gentrify

Gentrification began in 1969 with the renovation of the Beath-Dickey House by Bob Griggs and his partner Robert Aiken.

Freeway revolt against I-485

Main article: Freeway revolt in Atlanta

During this same period, there was an intense fight against the I-485 freeway which was to be built through the neighborhood, although many properties in Inman Park, as well as the entire neighboring neighborhood of Copenhill, were torn down in preparation for freeway construction.

Inman Park today

After decades of restoration and renewal, Inman Park is now a highly coveted intown neighborhood with numerous million-dollar properties.

Former industrial areas on the west side of the neighborhood - notably the sites of the former General Pipe and Foundry complex and the Mead paper plant, have been redeveloped and are home to both new and repurposed condo and apartment developments, restaurants and other businesses.

Education

Residents in Inman Park are within Atlanta Public Schools.

Zoned schools include:

• Mary Lin Elementary School (located in nearby Candler Park)
• Inman Middle School
• Henry W. Grady High School

References

1. ^ The original NRHP listing was as "Inman Park" but the boundary increase renamed it to "Inman Park Historic District" in the NRHP.
2. ^ "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. 2009-03-13. http://nrhp.focus.nps.gov/natreg/docs/All_Data.html. 
3. ^ National Register of Historic Places
4. ^ Bazemore, Ted (9/12/2007). "Inman Park". The New Georgia Encyclopedia. http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-3483. Retrieved 27 December 2010. 
5. ^ "Bruce Forsyth". Who do you think you are?. BBC. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00t6gbb. Retrieved 28 December 2010. 
6. ^ Joseph Forsyth Johnson was the author of The Natural Principles of Landscape Gardening; or, The adornment of land for perpetual beauty. Belfast: Archer, 1874
7. ^ "Homes at the Park: Beautiful residences that make Inman Park an ideal home place", Atlanta Consitution, 1896-03-26
8. ^ "Road Rage: If you enjoy downtown's green spaces, thank the intown voters of 1972", Atlanta Magazine, October 2005

External links

• Inman Park Neighborhood Association
• Atlanta City Council resolution (2002) to expand the historic district, contains detailed information about Inman Park history and architecture
• New Georgia Encyclopedia
• Sketches of prominent Inman Park homes, 1895
• Atlanta, Georgia, a National Park Service Discover Our Shared Heritage Travel Itinerary