Newsroom
Get the story behind the places, faces, and current events shaping the downtownATL district.
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The people, buildings, and moments that define downtown Atlanta's identity.
The building at 152 Nassau Street in downtown Atlanta — where Fiddlin' John Carson recorded country music's first major hit in 1923 — faces demolition for a Jimmy Buffett Margaritaville Resort. Preservationists are fighting to save it.
Cabbagetown grew up around the Fulton Bag and Cotton Mill, built by Appalachian families who grew cabbages in their front yards and cooked them in shotgun houses so close together the whole neighborhood smelled like soup.
Castleberry Hill's story begins with bootleggers, political riots, and a merchant named Daniel Castleberry who helped rebuild the neighborhood after it was burned to the ground. Today it's the National Park Service's pick for Atlanta's most complete surviving warehouse district.
Twenty years after the 1996 Games, artist John Ryan — the man who designed the most controversial mascot in Olympic history — broke his silence. His message: "What happened to Izzy is not his fault."
The Atlanta-Fulton County Central Library, Marcel Breuer's last completed building, faced demolition calls in 2016. Architects argued that its brutalist design was irreplaceable — and that the building deserved a second life, not a wrecking ball.
A construction crew digging near Centennial Olympic Park in July 2013 pulled a cannonball from the ground — a likely remnant of the 1864 federal siege of Atlanta, when Union forces fired thousands of shells into the downtown area.
