Atlanta A Twentieth-Century City

Excerpt

How Atlanta Grew.

The Atlanta of to-day is a growth of thirty-eight years. Twice has the upbuilding of a city on this site demonstrated its natural advantages. Within a few years before the war Atlanta had become a bustling town of 11,000 inhabitants, and during the three years which intervened before its destruction the place was the seat of varied and important industries, whose principal object was to sustain the military operations of the Confederacy. It was also a depot for the distribution of supplies to the surrounding country and a forwarding station for the commissary department of the army.

After its baptism of fire in November, 1861, when the inhabitants had been dispersed by the exigencies of war, and of more than 2,000 houses only 300 remained, the city took a new start, and its great growth dates from that time. It is therefore, a city of the new regime, erected on the ruins of the old.

The coat of arms of Atlanta fittingly typifies this remarkable history. No city on the continent has survived such destruction. No city has twice attained prominence with such rapidity. Atlanta’s foundation reaches back to the forties, and far-seeing men recognized it then as the place of promise, destined to be an important railroad-center and a seat of commerce. This conception of the new city had been accepted as a true one when it was destroyed by fire, and since its new birth in reconstruction days the old spirit arose and lighted the new path of Atlanta to a greater destiny.

The capital of the state was brought here from Milledgeville when the new city was hardly out of the ashes of war, and this gave a great impetus to its growth, which was further insured in 1877, when the people of Georgia voted to make Atlanta their capital. Its rapidly developing business and manufactures were brought to the attention of the whole country by the Cotton Exposition of 1881 which was a point of departure for the tremendous development of the Southeastern States during the decade between 1880 and 1890. This development found a splendid illustration in the great Cotton States and International Exposition of 1895.

The rapidity of the growth of Atlanta is illustrated by the fact that, since it was blotted from the map, the city has spread over twelve square miles of ground. Starting with no business in 1865, it received in 1903 four-tenths of the freight delivered in Georgia, and its post office receipts were four-tenths of those of the State. Thirty-nine years ago there was hardly a dollar to turn a trade; within the year just closed the bank clearings aggregated $115,000,000. At the beginning of this period there were only a few stragglers remaining in the wake of fire and sword. To-day there is a great city of over 105,000 people, the business headquarters of 125,000, with a floating population of many thousands more. From bare ground covered with ashes and ruins in 1865, the city has been built up to a value of $59,595,332, consisting largely of solid masses of brick and mortar, stone and steel, which go to make up a magnificent array of handsome business edifices....