Atlanta History Center
Encyclopedia
The Atlanta History Center is a history museum located in the Buckhead
district of Atlanta, Georgia
. The Museum was founded in 1926, and currently consists of 12 exhibits. There are also historic gardens and houses located on the grounds, including the Swan House and Tullie Smith Farm
. The Museum houses the Kenan Research Center, which includes 3.5 million resources and a reproduction of historian Franklin Garrett
's (1906-2000) office. The Museum also has one of the largest collections of civil war artifacts in the world.
The current temporary exhibits are:
The Kenan Research Center includes 3.5 million resources and a reproduction of historian Franklin Garrett
's office. It frequently has its own special exhibitions.
". It was led by Walter McElreath (1867-1951), after whom McElreath Hall is named. The periodical was later named Atlanta History: A Journal of Georgia and the South; it was last published in 2006.
In 1986 the still relatively small group received the DuBose Collection of Civil War artifacts, donated by Mrs. Beverly M. DuBose Jr. In 1989, the Society built the current museum to house the DuBose collection. In 1990, the Atlanta Historical Society was renamed the Atlanta History Center. The 15 million dollar museum opened in 1993 with 5 exhibitions, including Metropolitan Frontiers. An 11 million dollar expansion, finished in 1996, added two new permanent exhibits, Shaping Traditions: Folk Arts in a Changing South and Turning Point: The American Civil War and a 220 car parking deck. Later, the library was expanded, the gardens were reorganized, and a fourth permanent exhibit was added- Down the Fairway with Bobby Jones. In 2006, the Centennial Olympic Museum was finished.
, French
, German
, Japanese
and Spanish
.
Buckhead (Atlanta)
Buckhead is the uptown district of Atlanta, Georgia, United States, comprising approximately the northern one-fifth of the city. Buckhead is a major commercial and financial center of the Southeast, and it is the third-largest business district in Atlanta, behind Downtown and Midtown...
district of Atlanta, Georgia
Georgia (U.S. state)
Georgia is a state located in the southeastern United States. It was established in 1732, the last of the original Thirteen Colonies. The state is named after King George II of Great Britain. Georgia was the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution, on January 2, 1788...
. The Museum was founded in 1926, and currently consists of 12 exhibits. There are also historic gardens and houses located on the grounds, including the Swan House and Tullie Smith Farm
Tullie Smith House
The Tullie Smith House is a small plantation or farm house, built circa 1840 by Robert Smith. It is typical of the usual kind of plantation houses owned by small farmers. The house was located in Dekalb County, Georgia on . The last Smith to occupy the property was Tullie, the...
. The Museum houses the Kenan Research Center, which includes 3.5 million resources and a reproduction of historian Franklin Garrett
Franklin Garrett
Franklin Miller Garrett was the only official historian of Atlanta. His massive Atlanta and Environs: A Chronicle of its People and Events remains the best reference for the city's history.-Biography:...
's (1906-2000) office. The Museum also has one of the largest collections of civil war artifacts in the world.
Exhibits
The Atlanta History Center operates three types of exhibits - permanent, temporary, and traveling. There are six permanent exhibits.- The Centennial Olympic Museum is made up of 2 sections. One is the upper Sports Lab, accessible by elevator, in which you are able to test yourself against the Olympic records. There is also the main area, in which there are artifacts from the Olympics, interactives, information, and films. One of the main attractions is the 12-part test, which allows you to test yourself on your Olympic knowledge, and then posts your score.
- The Turning Point: The American Civil WarAmerican Civil WarThe American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
exhibition contains 1,400 of the Atlanta History Center's enormous collection of Civil War artifacts.
- The Metropolitan Frontiers exhibit chronicles Atlanta's expansion from farm to city in 4 stages- Rural Region, Transportation Center, Commercial City, and Suburban Metropolis.
- The Shaping Traditions: Folk Arts in a Changing South exhibit shows the development and attributes of Southern folk art. It includes forms ranging from clothing and food to singing and storytelling and presents both the traditional and the modern.
- The Down the Fairway with Bobby JonesBobby Jones (golfer)Robert Tyre "Bobby" Jones Jr. was an American amateur golfer, and a lawyer by profession. Jones was the most successful amateur golfer ever to compete on a national and international level...
exhibit is based on the life of Georgia's most famous golfer, Bobby Jones, and chronicles the early development of golf in the United States.
- The Phillip Trammell Shutze: Atlanta Classicist, Connoisseur, and Collector exhibit tells the story of Phillip Trammell Shutze, one of Atlanta's foremost architects, who was also known for his art collections. A Phillip Trammell Shutze designed house, the Swan House, is also on the grounds of the Atlanta History Center.
The current temporary exhibits are:
- The Native Lands: Indians and Georgia exhibit explores the Native Americans’ recent history through the voices and artistry of contemporary Creeks and Cherokees. [throughout 2010]
- The Voices Across the Color Line: The Atlanta Student Movement exhibit explores the 1960s Civil Rights movement through photographs, documents, videos, and contemporary oral history interviews with Atlanta student leaders.
- The War in Our Backyards: Discovering Atlanta, 1861-1865 exhibit focuses on Atlanta during the civil war years and links the battles and images of that time to current maps and images.
The Kenan Research Center includes 3.5 million resources and a reproduction of historian Franklin Garrett
Franklin Garrett
Franklin Miller Garrett was the only official historian of Atlanta. His massive Atlanta and Environs: A Chronicle of its People and Events remains the best reference for the city's history.-Biography:...
's office. It frequently has its own special exhibitions.
Historic House Museums
- The Tullie Smith HouseTullie Smith HouseThe Tullie Smith House is a small plantation or farm house, built circa 1840 by Robert Smith. It is typical of the usual kind of plantation houses owned by small farmers. The house was located in Dekalb County, Georgia on . The last Smith to occupy the property was Tullie, the...
is an antebellumAntebellum architectureAntebellum architecture is a term used to describe the characteristic neoclassical architectural style of the Southern United States, especially the Old South, from after the birth of the United States in the American Revolution, to the start of the American Civil War...
farmhouse built by the Robert Smith family and listed on the National Register of Historic PlacesNational Register of Historic PlacesThe National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...
. It was originally a small farm in Dekalb CountyDeKalb County, GeorgiaDeKalb County is a county located in the U.S. state of Georgia. The population of the county was 691,893 at the 2010 census. Its county seat is the city of Decatur. It is bordered to the west by Fulton County and contains roughly 10% of the city of Atlanta...
with 11 slaves, comprising 200 acre (0.809372 km²). The house was moved to the Atlanta History Center grounds in 1969, and it currently comprises the farm house, kitchen, blacksmith shop, smokehouse, double corncrib, log cabin, and barn, and several gardens. The barn contains several animals.
- The Victorian and Lee playhouses are miniature houses. The Lee playhouse is located between the McElreath Hall and the Tullie Smith Farm. It was donated to the Atlanta History Center in 1998. The Victorian playhouse is located beside the Boxwood Garden. It was donated to the Atlanta History Center in 1980, and has gone through 6 owners.
- The Swan House, designed by Philip Trammell Shutze in the 1920s, is named for its many swan designs. It is surrounded by the Boxwood Garden, based upon Italian gardens as created in 18th century England by Lord BurlingtonRichard Boyle, 3rd Earl of BurlingtonRichard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington and 4th Earl of Cork PC , born in Yorkshire, England, was the son of Charles Boyle, 2nd Earl of Burlington and 3rd Earl of Cork...
and William KentWilliam KentWilliam Kent , born in Bridlington, Yorkshire, was an eminent English architect, landscape architect and furniture designer of the early 18th century.He was baptised as William Cant.-Education:...
. The front landscape, two cloverleaf fountains and a terraced lawn, is one of the most photographed places in AmericaUnited StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
.
- The historic gardens are located next to the historic houses. The Cherry Sims garden contains Asian and native south-eastern plants. The Frank A. Smith Rhododendron Garden and the Swan House Boxwood Garden feature native plants. The Quarry Garden features pre-settlement plants only. The Tullie Smith Farm Garden features plants used in 1860s gardening, and includes two parts: a field, filled with profitable vegetables, and a smaller slave's garden.
- The Atlanta History Center also owns the restored Margaret Mitchell House & MuseumMargaret Mitchell House & MuseumThe Margaret Mitchell House is a historic house museum located in Atlanta. The structure was the home of author Margaret Mitchell. Located in Midtown, at 990 Peachtree Street, the house was known as the Crescent Apartments when Mitchell and her husband lived in Apt. 1 on the ground floor from 1925...
, home of Margaret MitchellMargaret MitchellMargaret Munnerlyn Mitchell was an American author and journalist. Mitchell won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1937 for her epic American Civil War era novel, Gone with the Wind, which was the only novel by Mitchell published during her lifetime.-Family:Margaret Mitchell was born in Atlanta,...
from 1925-1932 while she was writing the novel Gone With The WindGone with the WindThe slaves depicted in Gone with the Wind are primarily loyal house servants, such as Mammy, Pork and Uncle Peter, and these slaves stay on with their masters even after the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 sets them free...
. The house includes the Gone With The Wind movie museum, the reconstructed apartment #1 in which Mitchell lived, changing exhibitions, and The Literary Center. This is ticketed separately and is located near the Midtown MARTAMetropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit AuthorityThe Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority or MARTA is the principal rapid-transit system in the Atlanta metropolitan area and the ninth-largest in the United States. Formed in 1971 as strictly a bus system, MARTA operates a network of bus routes linked to a rapid transit system consisting...
station.
History
The Atlanta History Center was founded in 1926 by fourteen men as the Atlanta Historical Society and the next year began publishing the "Atlanta Historical BulletinAtlanta Historical Bulletin
Atlanta History: A Journal of Georgia and the South is a publication of the Atlanta Historical Society. It was established in 1927 with one issue per year as the Atlanta Historical Bulletin. In 1937, the journal began publishing three or four issues annually. At least one issue per year was...
". It was led by Walter McElreath (1867-1951), after whom McElreath Hall is named. The periodical was later named Atlanta History: A Journal of Georgia and the South; it was last published in 2006.
In 1986 the still relatively small group received the DuBose Collection of Civil War artifacts, donated by Mrs. Beverly M. DuBose Jr. In 1989, the Society built the current museum to house the DuBose collection. In 1990, the Atlanta Historical Society was renamed the Atlanta History Center. The 15 million dollar museum opened in 1993 with 5 exhibitions, including Metropolitan Frontiers. An 11 million dollar expansion, finished in 1996, added two new permanent exhibits, Shaping Traditions: Folk Arts in a Changing South and Turning Point: The American Civil War and a 220 car parking deck. Later, the library was expanded, the gardens were reorganized, and a fourth permanent exhibit was added- Down the Fairway with Bobby Jones. In 2006, the Centennial Olympic Museum was finished.
Accessibility
Paved pathways through the historic gardens connect to the Swan House and the Tullie Smith Farm, but most paths are unpaved. Large-print books are available for a few exhibitions in the Atlanta History Museum and videos have subtitles. Maps are available in EnglishEnglish language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
and Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
.