Downtown Decatur Map Circa 1963
Decatur Metro | November 5, 2013
Bill posted this link to a great map of downtown Decatur circa 1963 in a comment and I thought it deserved its own post!
Photo of map courtesy of davecito via Flickr
Bill posted this link to a great map of downtown Decatur circa 1963 in a comment and I thought it deserved its own post!
Photo of map courtesy of davecito via Flickr
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That’s the Decatur I grew up in. I graduated in 1965. Things have changed a bit!
The re-routing of Columbia Drive through the underpass (and creation of Commerce Drive) happened about this time, ’63 or ’64. Until then, those of us who lived out Belvedere way often faced a LONG wait at Columbia/College as trains came through (and there were a lot more trains back then, or at least it seemed so). It was also about this time that the new courthouse was being planned, and West Ct. Square was about to be ripped out for the building that until now housed Pita Pit. That whole area west of the Square was, in fact, still a street grid of small businesses and maybe a few houses, all pretty run down.
Interesting to see the streets that ran through Agnes Scott. Ansley, E. Hancock, and Green street all connected McDonough to Candler. Now most of the traffic is forced through College and Davis, and Dougherty is one way – think about this the next time someone complains about the intersections at College and Candler/McDonough.
Also cool to see the path of Oakview up to Agnes Scott, which used to be a streetcar line.
Interesting. On the top left of the map, it looks like Montgomery actually connected to Coventry.
I’m trying to figure out how Montgomery connected to Coventry. It’s a pretty steep slope up from Northern to Coventry these days. And the houses are pretty closely packed and similar in vintage along the part of Coventry where Montgomery would have come in.
There is that weird vacant space across from where Montgomery dead-ends into Northern, but I know what you mean about the slope. That was probably a great sledding hill!
And up on Coventry, I can’t figure out where the street came out. Which houses weren’t there? They are all close packed and similar in era of style. The two on the end are a bit different and one has definitely been added more recently but the street doesn’t appear to go through there unless it had a major bend that the map didn’t portray.
Think that connection may only identify city right of way. I’ve seen no evidence of a previously existing road or a bridge over the creek to connect with Coventry at that end of Montgomery.
So Commerce was an entirely new street presumably created by eminent domain. That’s a lot of “domain.” I just assumed it connected or took over or pieced other streets together. But both Marshall and Ponce Place still exist on the west side near Ponce.
Some portions of Commerce do appear to come from previous streets but they really just occupy the same right of way. Everything was rebuilt to accommodate higher speeds, fewer hard turns, and more cars. If you ever have a minute, take a look at how the topography was reworked down by Decatur First Bank to bank the turn. The engineering on it is not all that different than what you find on the interstate!
I have noticed! I used to walk up that step bank w the dog every morning while returning from the kids bus stop. I never considered that it was engineered – but makes sense.
Look at Brooks Street connecting West Trinity to Ponce near TDS
Scott tried to start a “rebuild Brooks Street” campaign in the other thread where this map was initially mentioned.
Bring Back Brooks!
I’m positioned and ready for it
The Ponce de Leon School is on this map as well. Surprised that hasn’t been mentioned yet.
That was the post office, right? Was there a different school at St. Thomas More’s location? (#59). Beacon Hill isn’t noted either. And the whole Trinity/Swanton Hill area next to Lenox Place is pretty different. Guess that was from Marta construction. Thanks for posting, interesting to see the changes!
See Bill Woolf’s comment on the Montgomery St. thread re which school is which.
could use a trader joe’s.
Very nice but I would like to see more of the outlying neighborhoods. But still, very very like awesome!!!!
You can also see how Atlanta Avenue used to cut all the way from downtown up to Howard. I used to ride my bike up Atlanta Avenue to Jenkins Cycle & Mower (which existed until a few years ago behind Thinking Man’s Tavern) to ogle at the Schwinn bicycles they sold and to watch the old men repair lawn mowers for hours on Saturdays.
Golden times, when kids had hours to fill on Saturdays by going about town on their bikes and finding interesting things to do, watch, learn from. (And opportunities to learn things the easy way and the hard way, and learn lessons some of us may not have shared with our parents to this day! Speaking only for myself.)
Tom, I did not know the bike was around when you were young.
Ah, first there was the basic Schwinn Typhoon. A plain old red bike. No gears. That hill up Atlanta Avenue was tough, as was North Decatur in front of the McDonald’s (in its old location). Then, there was the Schwinn Sting Ray, a banana seat styling gold machine. Finally, there was the Schwinn Lemon Peeler, a yellow five speed with banana seat and, so stylish that it had a large stick shift JUST LIKE A REAL CAR except that it sat on the bar right in front of the seat where it could most easily neuter you if you stopped suddenly. Eventually, I moved to the entry level touring bicycle, the Raleigh Record, shifting my drooling to a bicycle shop called “Saul’s” on the other side of town that had racing and touring bikes. Then, just before leaving town for college, Bicycle South appeared over next to Stovall Boats at North Decatur and Claremont, and it became the place where I could vent my bicycle envy.
Would love to know more (or anything, really) about the provenance of the map. DM? Bill?
The Flickr page says “Map by Dolph Map Co.”, who’s Wiki description actually makes for an interesting read…
“Based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, it was founded in 1926 by a one-time employee of the New York-based Hagstrom Map Company. Dolph has specialized in highly-detailed commercial and custom maps of cities in the southeastern United States, especially within the state of Florida. The company also publishes wall maps, digitally disseminated maps, maps on CD, print street atlases, and has published for phone directories and law enforcement agencies.
During the period between 1950 and 2000, Dolph published maps for cities in more than 20 states, though their primary focus has been the Southeastern US, and many of the 1950s and 1960s maps of cities in the Midwest and other parts of the U.S. have gone out of print.
As of 2010, maps of cities in Georgia, South Carolina, Virginia and Texas are also listed in their catalog, and custom-produced maps of cities elsewhere in the southern U.S. are commonly available through banks, real estate agencies and business organizations.”
I keep trying to scroll up and down on that map so I can see the rest of the city. I’ll bet “scroll” wasn’t even a verb back in 1963, unless it was used to describe how to move around in microfiche.
It referred to the way written documents were stored.
More information is hard to find, but here is an annexation-history map that helps a little. Insofar as the roads shown are accurate, it appears that Montgomery never connected to Coventry. It is conceivable that such was the original intention but the topography made it economically infeasible. Anyway, for what it’s worth, check this out:
http://www.decaturga.com/Modules/ShowDocument.aspx?documentid=2109
There are several streets that are shown as connecting on various maps but are really just rights-of-way that were never used. Another example on this map is Green St running all the way from S Candler to S McDonough, which actually is still a walking path.
Another fun old map of the area is at http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/sanborn/CityCounty/Decatur1911/IndexMap.html – it is one of the old Sanborn Fire Insurance maps, from 1911, showing all the streets in downtown Decatur at the time. If you click on the maps of the individual sections, it shows all the buildings, in some cases identifying what they were, what they were made of, what kind of heat they used.
Lots of fun. You could spend endless time on this looking at the old jail, post office, streets now gone, etc. There’s 3 schools on the map;
– Robin Street Public School
– Herring Street Public School
– Don Frazer Academy
Anyone know what each school was? I’ve got lots of guesses but here’s one:
Robin Street = Grades 1-12, whites only, but then it became the high school
Herring Street = ” , for black students
Don Frazer Academy = private 1-12, whites only, then it became condos
Don Fraser was a High School for boys (established by the Presbyterian Church right after they established Decatur Female Seminary – now Agnes Scott College – for girls). In 1892 the Presbyterian Church had built their new building at Sycamore and Church, and the old building was used for Fraser. Don Fraser only lasted about 20 years or so, once public schools got better, and the building was torn down around 1920.
Herring Street was indeed the Black school.
(All info from Caroline McKinney Clarke’s The Story of Decatur).