Emory University, whose campus you have reached, began in 1836 in Oxford, Georgia, and moved to Atlanta in 1915 when Asa Candler, whose Coca-Cola fortune had made him one of the wealthiest men in America, donated seventy-five acres and one million dollars for a new campus here in Druid Hills. That gift, one of the most consequential in American higher education history, transformed a small Methodist college into a research institution of national significance. Emory's medical school and hospital complex is one of the largest in the Southeast.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, whose campus is adjacent to Emory's, has a formal partnership with the university, creating a concentration of public health expertise that became nationally and globally visible during the COVID-19 pandemic. During the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, Emory University Hospital treated the first patients with Ebola to be treated on American soil, demonstrating the kind of capacity that comes from the CDC-Emory partnership. The Carter Center, founded by President Jimmy Carter to advance democracy and reduce disease globally, is located nearby and maintains close ties to Emory.
The campus itself is built in a distinctive pink marble collegiate architecture that gives it a visual identity unlike any other American university. You have now walked the full arc of Atlanta's history. The city that burns and rebuilds is still building.