Inman Park, where you now walk, was Atlanta's first planned suburb, developed in 1889 by real estate developer Joel Hurt along the city's first electric streetcar line. Hurt envisioned a romantic, picturesque neighborhood of Victorian houses set in landscaped grounds, with curvilinear streets, a central park, and deed restrictions that maintained the character of the development. Asa Candler, the entrepreneur who purchased the Coca-Cola formula from inventor John Pemberton for two thousand three hundred dollars in 1888 and built it into a global empire, lived in Inman Park — and his wealth, derived from selling sugar water infused with trace amounts of cocaine and caffeine to Americans who could not get enough of it, helped shape the neighborhood's early character.
Inman Park declined through the mid-twentieth century as residents moved to newer suburbs, and by the 1960s many of its Victorian houses were subdivided into apartments and rooming houses. A neighborhood preservation movement began in the 1970s, and Inman Park became one of the first urban neighborhoods in Atlanta to be systematically restored. Today its Victorian homes are among the most sought-after in the city.
The annual Inman Park Festival each April is Atlanta's oldest neighborhood festival.