Comments on: Downtown Decatur Map Circa 1963

By: Marianne

Marianne — Thu, 07 Nov 2013 21:50:09 +0000

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).

By: At Home in Decatur

At Home in Decatur — Thu, 07 Nov 2013 21:00:17 +0000

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

By: Marianne

Marianne — Thu, 07 Nov 2013 17:38:10 +0000

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.

By: Chadwick Stogner

Chadwick Stogner — Thu, 07 Nov 2013 02:04:16 +0000

I’m positioned and ready for it

By: Steve

Steve — Wed, 06 Nov 2013 18:28:01 +0000

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.