Renovating and Recognizing Decatur’s Lost Neighborhood
Decatur Metro | December 6, 2010The AJC had a nice story over the weekend about Decatur’s master plan to renovate the Beacon Hill Complex – once Beacon Elementary and Trinity High School for the city’s black community – to serve as the city’s arts hub and provide the Decatur Police with an upgraded facility.
Here are a couple snippets from the article that I found particularly interesting…
[Former Decatur Mayor Elizabeth Wilson] can drive around the former Beacon Hill and map out a verbal grid of the district’s halcyon days, including at least a dozen streets that no longer exist. She points out where the Ritz Movie Theater stood, and where other businesses were, including Rogers Cab Co. , Mossman’s Grocery, Kilgore and Anderson’s Barbershop, Spates Barbecue Stand, LC’s Rib Shack, the Cox Brothers Funeral Home, Tom Steel’s Cafe (known for its sausage “splits” that cost 10 cents), George Sterling’s Cafe (whose splits were 15 cents because they had lettuce, tomato and, Wilson said, “real meat”) and Thankful Baptist Church, where Jackie Robinson spoke in the early 1960s.
…No matter the cost, [architectural historian Steven] Moffson believes the project’s more than worth it.
“I’ve visited a lot of these equalization schools throughout the state,” he said. “If they haven’t been torn down, then they’ve been abandoned, or they’re in very bad shape. That’s what’s so great about this project. They’re not only saving the schools, they’re preserving the memory of an entire community.”
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I thought this was a great story too. I’ve been lucky enough over the years to run into some of this history and it’s fascinating. By the time most of us arrived in Decatur, the center of Decatur’s African-American community seemed to be on the south side of town but it was originally right downtown. Very sad that little remains to remind us but good that we are preserving what’s left and the oral history.
Wow. I grew up in the Decatur area, my son just recently played in soccer games at Ebster Field, and I’m embarrassed to admit that this is the first time I’ve ever heard of Beacon HIll. What a tragic loss — though it’s just one of many neighborhoods throughout the country that were destroyed during that period. Good intentions, maybe, but terrible results. Glad they’re doing this project, but I hate to think of the thriving community that was once there.
Some documentation of this area can be found in the 1911 Sanborn maps of Decatur – see sheets 4, 5 and 7. http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/sanborn/CityCounty/Decatur1911/?Welcome