The 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.”