Notice how clubs, theaters, and ballrooms once turned Edgewood Avenue into the liveliest entertainment spine in the South. During the decades of segregation, Edgewood Avenue and the surrounding Old Fourth Ward neighborhood hosted performers and patrons who were barred from the white entertainment venues across town. Jazz musicians, gospel singers, and blues performers played here to packed houses.
The neighborhood takes its name from its position as the fourth ward of the original city — it is one of Atlanta's oldest residential districts, and it was heavily African-American through most of the twentieth century. The Old Fourth Ward today is in the middle of a dramatic transformation driven by the Atlanta BeltLine and Ponce City Market, with new restaurants, bars, and apartments arriving at a pace that longtime residents describe in complex terms. The neighborhood that produced Martin Luther King Jr. is now one of the hottest real estate markets in the city.
The street you are standing on carries both histories — the long story of a community's survival and the newer story of a neighborhood reimagined. Pay attention to what is still here and what has already changed.