Chamblee

Recent American history gives us several vivid examples of  how a cataclysmic, or monumental, event can fundamentally change the reality and character of a city.  In Miami, in 1992, Hurricane Andrew changed the city forever, and at least for the rest or our lifetimes, New Orleans will mostly be referred to in terms of "pre-Katrina" and "post-Katrina."  The 1996 Summer Olympics transformed Atlanta from a major city in the South, to a truly international and multicultural metropolis, and  the inside-the-perimeter-but-independent municipality of Chamblee is at the very heart of the transformation.  

Atlanta was built on the legacy of the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement, and before 1996, Atlanta was a city seen in almost completely in black and white.  In the 1970s, and 1980s, there were no significant immigrant populations, or ethnic enclaves, and Asians and Latinos made up less than 3% of the population as a whole. 

Some still think of Atlanta as the capital of the Deep South, a city of old plantation homes, mint juleps, and "Designing Women" accents.  I know I did, before I first visited in 2007.  The 1996 Summer Olympics changed everything.  A huge demand for workers to build Olympic venues and housing for athletes attracted huge numbers of immigrants looking for work and a better life.  You can still order sweet tea just about anywhere, and Southern friendliness and hospitality are still the rule, but over the past 15 years, Metro Atlanta has shifted very dramatically into an impressively diverse and cosmopolitan city of the world. 

Chamblee, located just north and east of Buckhead, and south and west of Doraville, grew from a collection of dairy pastures and farms, and a military base in the early 1900s, to a small manufacturing town through the middle of the century.  Frito-Lay, Kodak, and General Electric anchored the local economy, and the nearby Doraville General Motors plant employed many Chamblee residents.  The Dekalb Peachtree Airport, occupying a large swath of town, grew in importance through the years, but in the 1980s, Chamblee was hit hard by manufacturing downsizing, and plant closings.  Residents moved out, and local retail and restaurants shut their doors. 

In the late 1980s, local churches sponsored refugees from Southeast Asia, and a number of Chinese migrants - from  both China and California - moved into Chamblee to take advantage of the cheap and available housing and easy accessibilty to MARTA.  In the early 1990s, day laborers from Mexico and Central America began to arrive, and tensions  rose between the nearly all white American old-timers and the immigrant newcomers.  City council meetings were often marked by xenophobic remarks and anti-immigrant outrage.  But, Chamblee city leaders decided to take advantage of the opportunities that the new residents were creating, and a deliberate effort was made to welcome immigrants to rent empty apartments and set up shop in abandoned strip malls. And in the few years preceding the Olympics, immigrant workers flocked to Chamblee, and neighboring Doraville, and in doing so, transformed Atlanta forever. 

It's worth noting that while Chamblee has transitioned from a quiet Atlanta suburb into a  core of ethnic diversity, it has continuously been home to the federal headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control since 1942.  Originally founded as the Office of National Defense Malaria Control Activities the agency set forth with the mission of fighting malaria, which was a common affliction in the American South.  

Chamblee is centered around the main thoroughfare, Buford Highway which is lined with Vietnamese plazas, Chinese strip malls, and Mexican mini-malls.  There is a lot of really remarkable overlap of these three dominant groups, and there are several places that announce their bargains in Spanish, Vietnamese, and Chinese languages.  Currently, a little more than 50% of the population is ethnically Mexican, with smaller, but significant, populations of Guatemalans, Salvadorans, and Hondurans, and about 13% of Chamblee's residents are Vietnamese-American.  Atlanta has the fastest growing Chinese population of any metro area in the United States - now nearing 100,000 - and  with the Taipei Economic and Cultural Center, the Chinese School of Atlanta, and the Chinatown Mall, Chamblee is the cultural heart of Metro Atlanta's Chinese community. 

To the west of Buford Highway, and north of the county airport, sits Antique Row - a village main street of vintage buildings and converted old homes now selling rare antiques and collectibles.  In more ways than one, it's a quiet reminder of Chamblee's not-too-distant past - a sort of oasis of olden days. 

Of course, Chamblee was a particularly exciting and inspiring neighborhood to explore.  In keeping with one of the main themes of this project, I looked for images of texture and reflection, and found a lot of subject matter.  Also, I tried to capture the cultural flavor of Chamblee, without being too literal.  Welcome to the new Deep South.

West End

About a  five minute drive southwest of Downtown Atlanta and Castleberry Hill, the neighborhood of West End stands proud and steeped in history, culture, and architectural beauty.  West End is, in some ways an inner-city small town.  It has a thriving and very walkable main street, Ralph David Abernathy Boulevard, lined with shops and restaurants, places of worship, and the West End Mall - and it is surrounded by some of the oldest and most architecturally interesting homes in all of Atlanta.  Residents have known each other for years, and still the community is a part of Atlanta's urban central core.

In 1830, the area now known as West End was simply a crossroads.  The Newnan Road connected the small town of Newnan with Decatur, and crossed over the Sandtown Road which went west into the Native-American village of Sandtown - or Oktahasasi in Creek.  In the early 1830s, the Whitehall Inn was built near the crossroads, and development followed over the next decades.  

After the Civil War, real estate developers saw the Whitehall area's potential as an ideal suburb for affluent Atlantans to take up residence, and in 1868 the neighborhood was renamed, West End, after the upscale London theatre district.  In 1870, a trolley rail line was established, and the neighborhood prospered and grew up until the Great Depression.  

The aging West End neighborhood struggled through the mid-20th Century and then the collapse of Jim Crowe and segregation laws in the 1960s brought large numbers of African-Americans to the neighborhood.  With three historically Black college campuses - Spelman, Morehouse, and Clark Atlanta - just a few blocks away, African-American professors and students took advantage of the close proximity and beautiful old homes available. Now, West End is about 96% African-American.

The influence of  African-American academics and thought leaders has given West End a very distinct character.  While other historic African-American neighborhoods, like Sweet Auburn and The Old Fourth Ward, are colored by their prominence in the years of the Civil Rights Movement, West End has a visible and strong post-sixties Afrocentric vibe.  West African dashikis, kaftans and  head wraps are common street attire.  There's a prominent African-American Islamic center, and The Shrine of the Black Madonna - a congregation of the Pan-African Orthodox Christian Church.  On the main strip, there are several African-American bookstores, shops selling African decor and clothing, and a popular vegetarian soul food restaurant. 

Just off Abernathy Boulevard are beautiful tree-lined streets with homes that are textbook examples of Queen Anne architecture, Craftsman bungalow, American Foursquare, Folk Victorian, and Colonial Revival.  Peeples Street, in particular, has some magnificent historic residences, including Hammonds House, formerly a prominent physician's home, that now houses a signficant African-American art collection and is open to the public.  

The West End neighborhood is another wonderfully unique panel in the Atlanta quilt of neighborhoods.  It's a bustling, thriving niche that is, in many ways, self-contained, but still shares its spirit and history and character with the whole.  And, that's exactly the dynamic that makes Atlanta such a cool place to live and explore.  

East Atlanta

Driving around Atlanta, it won't take long to notice a lot of  mysterious oval Euro-style EAV bumper stickers. EAV stands for East Atlanta Village, and the stickers' ubiquity is telling of the sense of neighborhood pride that East Atlantans have for their oasis of cool and community. 

East Atlanta is located about 3 miles east of Downtown Atlanta, and little more than a mile directly south of Atlanta's epicenter of counterculture - Little Five Points.  The  residential neighborhood is centered around a refreshingly walkable retail, restaurant and nightlife district known as East Atlanta Village, or simply The Village.  

Before the European conquest, the area now known as East Atlanta was home to the Creeks, and the current Flat Shoals Road was a Creek trail used for trading with their Cherokee neighbors who lived on the north side of the Chattahoochee River.  After the forced removal of the Creek people, the area was sparsely populated until well after the Civil War.  In 1915, the growing suburb of East Atlanta was annexed by the City of Atlanta, and the new Atlanta neighborhood continued to attract new residents and businesses for several decades.  


In the 1960s, East Atlanta was targeted by Civil Rights groups as an example of a racially segregated neighborhood (and home to leaders of the Ku Klux Klan).  Middle Class African-American families took advantage of the Fair Housing Act, and moved into the neighborhood, and many long-time European-American residents moved out.  In their rush to join the "White flight," many sold their homes at ridiculously low prices to slumlords which, in turn, caused the neighborhood to decline in value and appearance.  Like too many in-town Atlanta neighborhoods, East Atlanta continued to suffer from low property values, blighted buildings, and high crime for too many years.  In 1981, the East Atlanta Community Association was formed, but it wasn't until the late 1990s that the association's efforts began to attract new residents and businesses.  


Over the past decade, East Atlanta has become not-so-arguably the hippest and edgiest neighborhood in the city - while managing to create an authentic and solid sense of community.  Long-time African-American families live peacefully next door to purple-haired hipsters in craftsman bungalows.  Aspiring young rappers mingle with heavily tattooed aging punks at Joe's coffee shop, and the Earl has become the most important indie music spot in the entire city.  The gay community has set up shop in East Atlanta in a big way, and Mary's is now one of the best gay bars in the city, while a few doors down, My Sister's Room is the most popular lesbian bar in Atlanta.  


In spite of the "happening" nature of East Atlanta, the vibe is still surprisingly laid-back and not pretentious.  It really does feel like a small town - a very cool small town - but a small town nonetheless, and in terms of subject matter for this project, it definitely did not disappoint.  The textures, and colors, and street art, and points of reflection that so often define Atlanta's neighborhoods, are in no short supply in East Atlanta.