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Construction
Update
| Park
History
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Click for enlargements: Park Plan:  Atlanta Beltline:  For more information about the Atlanta Beltline Project, advance to www.beltline.org |
| Construction Update |
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June 16, 2010
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Christopher T. Martin Photography Park Construction Progress Photos June 3, 2010 |
 February 3 , 2010 Video Update Quicktime video courtesy of Angel Poventud. (big file... give it a minute) |
| January 20 , 2010 Historic 4th Ward Park Construction (photo courtesy Van Hall)  |
 October 1, 2009 Historic 4th Ward Park Construction - South end of Clear Creek Basin & Amphitheater Click for enlargement (photo courtesy Van Hall) |
| August 23, 2009 Photo composite of construction site: (courtesy Van Hall)  |
The backhoes, excavators, and dump trucks have begun working full-tilt on Phase I of the Historic Fourth Ward Park. The work will include remediation of the old industrial site south of North Avenue at City Hall East and the construction of walkways, an amphitheater and event lawn, and numerous water features, including a two-acre stormwater detention pond. The construction of Phase I of the park will cost approximately $23,000,000 and is expected to be completed by mid-August of 2010. The first phase of the park will occupy a five-acre site between Morgan Street and Rankin Street and west of N. Angier Avenue. Two more sections are planned, Phases II and III, which, when completed, will extend the park to North Avenue to the north and Ralph McGill Avenue to the south, encompassing a total of thirty-five acres. A four-acre satellite park a quarter-mile to the southeast will include a multi-use field, a playground, restroom, and a 15,000 sq. ft. skate park. |
Park History
HISTORIC FOURTH WARD PARK TO BE BUILT ON SITE OF EARLY TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMUSEMENT PARK
Excerpted from:
Vale of Amusements: Modernity, Technology, and Atlanta's Ponce de Leon Park, 1870-1920
B
y: Sarah Toton, Emory University
Posted January 20, 2010
In the late 1860s, Atlanta residents began visiting the springs in John Armistead's beech grove two miles east of town. [Approx. 50 yds. south of the intersection of Ponce de Leon and the proposed Beltline–– Ed.] With the filling-in of Yancey Springs to make way for the Air-Line Railroad in 1868, Atlantans looked to Armistead's springs to supplement their residential water supply. A retired Atlanta physician, Dr. Henry L. Wilson, named the spot "Ponce de Leon Springs" based on his assertion that the water held rejuvenative properties. To meet rising demand, Armistead set up a residential water delivery service in late 1871. By the spring of the following year, an omnibus carried passengers daily from Atlanta to Armistead's springs.
For more info about the map to the right...
The growing traffic from Atlanta to Ponce de Leon Springs drew the attention of Richard Peters, co-founder of the Atlanta Street Railroad Company. Looking to profit from the city's latest hot spot, the streetcar company extended its Peachtree Street Line east to Armistead's property in 1874, along what is now Ponce de Leon Avenue. The extension required the construction of a two-hundred-fifty-foot-long trestle over Clear Creek. The railroad's investment soon paid off as the popular line took Atlantans by horse-drawn trolley to the Springs for a ten-cent fare.
Richard and E.C. Peters began the process of transforming Ponce de Leon Springs into a premier attraction. In January 1888, the Atlanta Street Railroad leased Ponce de Leon to N.C. Bosche, a prominent Atlanta businessman and partner in the paint firm, Bosche & Donahue. Bosche dreamed of transforming the park into a refined beer garden and made plans to add a ten pin alley, additional outdoor seating, and a larger pavillion near the end of the streetcar line. Two years later, further remodeling plans were pursued by W.A Hemphill, president of the railway company that owned the park. In 1890, Hemphill brought in Julius Hartman, a local landscape designer who had successfully established another local park called "Little Switzerland" (adjacent to Grant Park, Little Switzerland's site became White City amusement park in 1907). Hartman envisioned enhancing the "natural beauty of this restful spot" by adding rustic benches and graveled walking paths as well as a lake covering four acres, and improving the pavillion through the addition of a music room (equipped with a piano) and a ladies' reception room.
The Ponce de Leon Casino, leased by Jack Wells, opened in the park on Monday June 1, 1903 with a performance of the comedy "The Lady Slavy" by the forty-five member Giffen Musical Comedy Company. The rest of the park likely opened a few days later on a rainy Sunday, June 6, 1903: "there were thousands of people on the grounds, while the new theater, the Casino, was packed to its full capacity with the Griffin Comedy Company as the attraction."21 In addition to the Casino, a summer playhouse modeled after the Ocean View Casino, the park also offered "Coliseum" (a sixty-foot oak platform that served as the park entrance from the trolley line) was complete. From here, patrons could visit "the theater, the merry-go-round, the laughing gallery, the cave of the winds, the penny arcade, the Japanese ping pong parlor, the Ferris wheel, the pony track, the miniature railways, the Gypsy village, the shooting gallery, the knife and cane boards, the baby racks, two attractive restaurants, pop corn and candy stands and two elegant soda water pavilions.
Like most small amusement parks around the nation at the turn-of-the-last-century, Ponce de Leon and its mechanized attractions fell out of fashion in the late 1920s, and its days as a tranquil natural spot and a mechanical wonderland ended by the early part of the decade. New venues and modes of mass entertainment emerged, from the baseball field that would take Ponce's place to movie palaces like the Fox Theatre only two miles away. (Image to the right courtesy of the Atlanta History Center)
For more information about the history of the Ponce de Leon Amusement Park in the early twentieth century, with many pictures and post cards of the era, go to http://www.southernspaces.org/contents/2008/toton/1a.htm
For pictures of the Amusement Park, see http://pecannelog.com/2009/07/08/atlantas-garden-of-eden/ and http://www.hiwassee.us/midtown/content/HistPonceDeLeonParkGallery.shtml
Article:
Vale of Amusements: Modernity, Technology, and Atlanta's
Ponce de Leon Park, 1870-1920
By: Sara Toton, Emory University
In the late 1860s, Atlanta
residents began visiting the springs in John Armistead's beech grove
two miles east of town. With the filling-in of Yancey Springs to
make way for the Air-Line Railroad in 1868, Atlantans looked to
Armistead's springs to supplement their residential water supply.
A retired Atlanta physician, Dr. Henry L. Wilson, named the spot
"Ponce de Leon Springs" based on his assertion
that the water held rejuvenative properties. To meet rising demand,
Armistead set up a residential water delivery service in late 1871.
By the spring of the following year, an omnibus carried passengers
daily from Atlanta to Armistead's springs.
more...
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