West End, the neighborhood you are walking through, is the oldest in Atlanta, one that predates the city itself. The area was originally a stagecoach stop on the road between Decatur and the Chattahoochee River, known as White Hall Tavern, established in the 1830s before the railroad junction that would become Atlanta was platted in 1837. The neighborhood was incorporated as a separate town called West End in 1868 and was annexed by Atlanta in 1894, bringing with it Victorian residential streets that still survive in remarkable condition.
Joel Chandler Harris, the author of the Uncle Remus stories, lived here in a house still known as the Wren's Nest. West End went through dramatic demographic changes in the mid-twentieth century as white residents moved to the suburbs and the neighborhood became predominantly African-American, eventually becoming part of the broader Southwest Atlanta Black community that surrounds the Atlanta University Center. Today West End is undergoing rapid change again, with the BeltLine's Westside Trail drawing new investment and new residents to blocks that had seen decades of disinvestment.
The oldest neighborhood in Atlanta is in the middle of its latest reinvention, as it has always been.