Sharon Foster Jones Livres

In 1895, the Atlanta Exposition thrust the city and the South into the forefront of international news. Atlantans, legendary for their pluck, resolved to host an exhibition of the world's cultural, agricultural, and manufacturing products while promoting civil liberties for women and African Americans. Patriotism and industrialism fueled the show. Thirty years before, the Civil War had destroyed the cotton-producing states of America, and this exhibition illustrated those states' progress in the years following the war. In one day, attendees such as U.S. president Grover Cleveland could view Italian art, a live school for the deaf, the Liberty Bell, trained elephants, a Mexican village, and, of course, cotton manufacturing. There were other, smaller fairs in Atlanta, but the Cotton States and International Exposition will be known forever as "the Atlanta Exposition" because of its magnitude--both physically and intellectually. Today the remnants of the fairgrounds comprise Atlanta's beloved green spot: Piedmont Park.

Named for the famous Spanish explorer who was said to have discovered the Fountain of Youth, Atlanta s Ponce de Leon Avenue began as a simple country road that conveyed visitors to the healing springs that once bubbled along it. Now, few motorists realize that the avenue, one of Atlanta s major commuter thoroughfares, was a prestigious residential street in Victorian Atlanta, home to mayors and millionaires. An economic turn in the twentieth century transformed the avenue into a crime-ridden commercial corridor, but in recent years, Atlantans have rediscovered the street s venerable architecture and storied history. Join local historian Sharon Foster Jones on a vivid tour of the avenue from picnics by the springs in hoopskirts and Atlanta Crackers baseball to the Fox Theatre and the days when Vivien Leigh, Clark Gable and Al Capone lodged in the esteemed hotels lining this magnificent avenue."