|
|
|
|
Atlanta's backyard turns 100! Benefitting the Piedmont Park Conservancy “Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the park.”—Wallace Stevens the book For the hundredth anniversary of Atlanta's Piedmont Park in June 2004, the Piedmont Park Conservancy, under the editorship of Darlene Roth and Jeff Kemph, has drawn the definitive, lavishly illustrated history of the city's backyard in Piedmont Park: Celebrating Atlanta's Common Ground. Originally the site of the 1895 Cotton States and International Exposition, the 189 acres in the heart of the city were neglected to the point of being nearly derelict—the off-season home for a circus and a few scraggly ballfields. When a few city elders and members of the nearby Gentleman’s Driving Club (now the Piedmont Driving Club) took an interest in developing the land as a common park site, the Olmsted Brothers design team was engaged. Influenced by the ideas of their father (Frederick Law Olmsted, designer of New York’s Central Park), the brothers proposed a "green ribbon" that would unfurl throughout the city. Land for the Park was purchased by the city 1904 and the site has continued to be associated with historic events. The city’s first golf course was laid out there—an impromptu seven-hole links created by local citizens, who used the Pennsylvania Building as their clubhouse. Four presidents have visited the grounds—Theodore Roosevelt, William McKinley, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Jimmy Carter. The University of Georgia Wildcats (with their billy-goat mascot) had lost 10-0 to the Auburn Tigers in the state’s first interstate collegiate football game in 1892. The game was held inside the driving club’s oval racetrack, the same space where some of the first professional baseball games in the South were played by the Atlanta Crackers from 1902 to 1904. Home to the Piedmont Arts Festival, AIDS Walk, Atlanta political rallies, concerts from everyone from The B-52s to the ASO—as well as countless ballgames and courtings—the park has over two million visitors each year. The book brings together essays from local historians and writers to give a full picture—social, political, and historical—of Atlanta’s common ground, while 272 rare and never-before-published vintage and contemporary illustrations bring the whole to rich life. Anecdotes and quotes from some of Atlanta's most esteemed citizens and visitors—Furman Bisher, Rick Bragg, Sibley Fleming, Terry Kay, Sam Massell, Indigo Girls Amy Ray and Emily Saliers, the B-52’s Fred Schneider, to name just a few—as well as everyday Atlantans testify to how much this celebrated greenspace means to her residents. the authors Historian Darlene Roth is director of Darlene Roth & Associates and former director of exhibitions and collections at the Atlanta History Center. She is the author of Matronage: Patterns of Women's Organizations in Atlanta: 1890-1940 and co-author, with Andy Ambrose, of Metropolitan Frontiers: A Short History of Atlanta. Jeff Kemph is managing director of Kemph Interactive in Atlanta and vice president of American Social History & Social Movements. Kemph has developed programming for such public and private organizations as the National Geographic Society, the Smithsonian Institute, and the National Audobon Society, among others. Lee May, long-time gardening columnist and feature writer for the Atlanta Journal Constitution, has contributed to the Los Angeles Times, PBS's The Victory Garden, and Southern Accents. He has won many national awards, including the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award Grand Prize and the Gold Medal Award from the National Conference of Christians and Jews. He has served as a member of the board of the Atlanta Botanical Garden and the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. He is the author of In My Father's Garden and Gardening Life. He lives with his wife Lyn in Connecticut. Founded in 1989, the Piedmont Park Conservancy is a private, nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation and restoration of Piedmont Park as a vital, healthy green space and as a cultural and recreational resource which enhances the quality of life for all Atlantans. The Conservancy is committed to improving the Park’s environment and function for its many constituencies, whether they are the solitary runner, birdwatcher, or festivalgoer. |
PIEDMONT PARK
